The In-Betweeners
10th March 2015
Richard Fernandez points out some inconvenient truth.
The United States was founded by men well acquainted with greatest power of the age: Britain. The Founders were not ignorant of efficiencies of parliamentary government. The British Army came perilously close to getting them “done”. Rather they both respected and feared it.
The instrument of government they created to replace the Crown was calculated to both exercise power and protect its citizens from that power. What they did not provide was an adequate mechanism for resolving fundamental differences of principle within the mechanism of government. As the Lincoln-Douglas debates suggested, that had to be fixed by other means. Once “a house is divided” gridlock ensued; and there is no remedy until the house was united again. The Constitution seems designed to force the body politic to reach a consensus externally before it would allow the wheels to turn again. The Amendments are peace treaties marking the resolution of various crises.
Permanently resolving the crisis in favor of single body may not be a “better system”. The crises themselves cannot be finessed. They will fester until they are fundamentally resolved. Examples of this abound. Only today the White House and Democratic lawmakers expressed indignation at a letter sent by 47 GOP lawmakers to Iran reminding the Ayatollahs that the government of the United States consisted of more than one man.
Yeah … the nerve!