THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

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THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

The presidency of Donald Trump has renewed rare debates in American politics about the future of democracy, the constitutional state, and other elements of our country that we have been taking for granted for a long, long time. 

Of course, we can talk about the Trump presidency for hours and spill large quantities of ink holding the Trump Administration responsible for our constitutional and political deterioration.  

However, it is imperative to point out several important developments in the last few decades in American politics that have transformed the historical and traditional character of the American system and practice of government. 

There are three elements that have undermined the system.  The first is the deterioration of the legislative power as an arena of compromises and deliberation. The second is the change in the traditional features of American political parties, and the third is the increasing power of executive decision-making. These three dimensions are interrelated. 

Congress is supposed to be one of the key components in the division of powers. The division of powers is a mechanism of limitation of absolute power and monarchical rule .  The idea is that power counteracts power. Such mechanism not only put limits to power but also enables more individual and societal freedom and empowerment.

Congress is also supposed to bring societal representation in the decision-making process. The Senate was to name two Senators per state regardless of the state’s size, and the House of Representatives was supposed to represent the population, divided into districts. This local-based representation was supposed to establish closeness between local interests and concerns and the representative. Or in the observation made by Tocqueville about America, the system enables the people to bring to the table issues that affect the citizen in a direct way.

The other role of Congress is to be what John Stuart Mill and Max Weber called a “center of reason,” namely a place where deliberation of different views and representation of diverse interests could be placed on the table for discussion. Yes, it makes sense that when so many material and ideal interests are placed on the table, there will not be compatibility between them. Therefore, deliberation and compromise are vital and necessary factors in maintaining the legitimacy and functioning of the system. In fact, this is why we have the filibuster. The filibuster was not originally designed as a mechanism to obstruct legislation, as it is often used today, or as a device to protect Jim Crow laws as former U.S president Barack Obama recently pointed out. The idea of the filibuster was to enable compromise with a political minority that may lose input capability only because it does not enjoy a majority. 

Thus, the American party system historically evolved in a different way than the one in Europe. Party discipline was practically nonexistent. Members of Congress established a relationship with constituencies and voted based on constituency desires. Party leadership and party guidance were relatively unimportant. 

However, there have been several transformations in the last several decades. It is true that not every group or constituency is equally powerful. We all know about the power of money and special interests, and we agree that this has become a problem. However, we also have the transformation of the nature of political parties, an issue that is less publicly discussed. 

As American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Orenstein has observed,

since the early 1990’s American political parties began to behave as parliamentary parties where parties vote in a block, and members of the party are subjected to party discipline. Under the leadership of Newt Gingrich in the House and Bob Dole in the Senate, the Republican Party unanimously blocked former U.S President Bill Clinton’s economic and healthcare plans. Starting in 1995, as the Republicans gained control of Congress, House Speaker Gingrich introduced the “Contract of America” as a revolutionary project supposedly supported by the Republican Party as a whole. Congressional polarization began to evolve. The Paula Jones, Whitewater Investigation, and the Clinton Impeachment reflected the intensity of this polarization despite efforts to reach significant compromises such as the 1997 Welfare Reform.   Republicans may have started the polarization, but Democrats followed suit. After former Republican President George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion found itself in a quagmire, the Democrats began an offensive against the Bush Administration. They saw an opportunity to attack the Republicans politically, to gain political points, and recover the three branches of government held in the hands of Republicans. For the Democrats, re-gaining political power was more important than helping the president to solve the Iraq crisis.  In 2006, Democrats finally recovered control of the House and the Senate. In 2008, they won the White House. This political culture continued. Republican attacks on President Obama plus obstruction of legislative initiatives and, most notably, blocking the nomination  of a Supreme Court justice after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia contributed to such polarization. That culture of polarization eventually gave birth to Donald Trump. 

Party discipline, ignoring constituencies, and legislative impasse has led to uncompromising ideological position. The Representative-constituency relation gave way to the Representative-party leadership relation. Nowadays, members of Congress cast their vote by following party leadership guidance rather  than by  consulting with constituencies. 

The legislative crisis has also given birth to a strong executive branch, which is the other subject-matter of this article. An increased decision-making process based on executive prerogatives characterizes the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Furthermore, particularly under Obama and Trump, party rallying around the president and loss of legislators’ independence has characterized the system. 

Under Bush, in the post- September 11 era, the government acquired  new surveillance powers that enabled intrusion into business records, library files, and other individuals’ data even if there was not a specific suspicion or reason to check it. 

Critics of the administration’s anti-terrorism efforts raised concerns that civil liberties were sacrificed in the name of national security.  Many of the Bush administration’s post-September 11 domestic strategies challenged the role of the federal and administrative courts in restraining executive action. White House counselors found ways to justify actions that required no judicial review or accountability regarding the detention of terrorism suspects, physical pressure, military trials, and other measures.

The fight against terrorism gave birth to a new foreign policy doctrine of preemptive war and unilateralism that led to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Upon taking the presidency, Barack Obama sought to reverse what he defined as an aggressive Bush foreign policy and the economic crisis that broke out at the end of the Bush Administration. 

Obama sought to reshape the country, using executive orders to impose regulations on economic life. Obama also felt free to redefine America’s role in the world by cutting deals that lack enough support in Congress, such as the Iran deal or the normalization of Cuba.  That attitude was the result of the presidential-congressional tension and alienation, which was turned into an ideological confrontation between the two major parties. Obama succeeded in passing bills such as the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Franks Act, and the economic stimulus package because he enjoyed Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress. However, after 2010 when he lost Congress, executive orders multiplied.   Close to 600 executive orders affecting mostly domestic issues were issued.

Furthermore, under Obama, more and more, the Democratic Party seemed to follow a discipline of rallying around the president. In a conversation I had with a Democratic Congressional staffer during the debates over the Iran deal, the staffer told me that the Obama White House instructed Democratic members of Congress not to take phone calls from constituents who were members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC was a vocal opponent of the Iran deal.  

Thus, under Trump we are facing a new executive power phenomenon that is less subtle than the one practiced by his predecessors.

In the case of Trump, the abuse of executive power also occurred in areas where the president’s authority is legal. There is no doubt that the president is legally entitled to appoint officers, fire prosecutors, agency directors, and certainly cabinet ministers. However, a president would rarely fire an officer because he or she is investigating something the president dislikes. That was the case with Geoffrey Berman, the U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York and FBI director James Comey. Likewise, the demand for full loyalty to his persona from the U.S. Attorney General cost Jeff Sessions his job and created a genuflect model of the attorney general. Hiring and firing officers may be often perceived as corrupt acts but fall within the president’s authority.

The pushing of boundaries has characterized the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump has gone where no other recent president had wanted to go regardless of legal authority. 

Overall, there must be improvements in the way in which American politics and political actions are conducted. First, we need to restore the capacity of Congress to deliberate. The party leadership needs to withdraw from exercising party discipline or aggressively interfering in the relationship between representatives and constituents. 

Executive power needs to be exercised with caution. However, we cannot count on presidential self-limitation.  Ethical issues must become legal issues. Presidential authority to fire officers must present justification and legislative approval in the same way that hiring certain officers require justification. A reform of the Attorney General office is needed, too. Loyalty to the president and the president’s philosophy is not necessarily a bad thing. However, blind loyalty or punishment for what is believed to be a lack of loyalty without proper public justification is not good for democracy. The case of the Attorney General is clearer. The Attorney General is the national prosecutor. He or she should not subordinate himself/herself to the presidents’ prerogatives. 

America is now on a dangerous journey. As a student of Latin America, I observed more often than not, abuse of presidential power, legislative corruption, judicial weakening, and state collapse.

Every future president and members of Congress must be aware of the consequences of their actions.

About Luis Fleischman

Luis Fleischman is a professor of Sociology at Palm Beach State College, the co-founder of the think-tank the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research. He is also the author of “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security,” and the author of a forthcoming book, “The Middle East Riddle: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Light of Political and Social Transformations in the Arab World,” to be published by New Academia.”