Introducing American Politics

Chapter One

2000 ... And Then?

One issue in the United States will be settled by the election year 2000. The country will show whether it approved of the Republicans' decision to proceed with President Bill Clinton's impeachment. But a chronic predicament of American politics is unlikely to be resolved. For the past 30 years, the Democratic and Republican Parties have been in stalemate. Leadership has swung like a pendulum between the two, with neither party dominant for long. The one exception was Ronald Reagan's presidency (1981-89).

No president since then has enjoyed the sustained support of Congress. No party has managed to break the stalemate and impose its vision of government on the country.

The Republicans in Disarray

The Republican Party is deeply split. It has the moralists who insist that American society must be purged of the foul weeds of atheism, decadence and sin. There are traditional conservatives who want to reduce the role of government and cut taxes. And in the middle are a few moderates who might reach compromises on most issues with moderate Democrats.

The Democrats under Clinton were defined by their opposition to extremist Republicans. But the sad truth is that the leadership of both parties lost credibility. Both parties have been seriously weakened.

The Center Cannot Hold

The Democrats managed to shake off the public image they presented in the late 1960s and 70s of wild-eyed leftists, "tax-and-spend liberals", the party of militant feminism, homosexuality and excessive and unfair preferences for racial minorities. Bill Clinton succeeded in moving the party to the center. The great danger in this was a steep decline in political enthusiasm.

Is this perhaps what the country wants? To preserve the political balance and avoid all radical efforts to deal with the country's problems? Americans are very conservative people and dislike change -- even when it is proposed by conservative politicians. The Constitution is designed to make radical changes very difficult. And it answers the country's mood.

The Constitution

The United States of America, unlike the old nations of Europe, has a formal date of birth and a birth-certificate. On 2 July 1776, elected representatives of 13 separate British colonies in North America voted for their independence from Britain at a convention in Philadelphia. They adopted the Declaration of Independence on 4 July.

That Declaration was not only the most important event in American history, but also stands as one of the most significant political events in world history. The principles of the Declaration and the Constitution, written 12 years later to set up a new government, are the founding charters of democratic government everywhere in the world.

The Slogan of 1776

The colonies had rebelled against the British government for imposing unpopular taxes on them, and also against the very idea of undemocratic governmental authority. The British government, far away in London, decided for itself how much to tax the colonies and how to spend the revenues. It carried out its decisions without consulting the colonists, let alone winning their consent. And this gave the colonists their most effective slogan in 1776 ...

How To Set Up a Republic

Once they had taken the fateful decision to rebel, the Philadelphia Congress had to set up a government. They all agreed it was to be a republic. But there was a difficulty. There were no standard models for republican constitutions. In the 20th century, when most European monarchies were overthrown and scores of former colonies won their independence, they could use the American, French or Soviet models for their constitutions. The Americans had to decide without any precedents.

The Continental Congress first drew up Articles of Confederation--the first American Constitution. It was adopted in 1777.

It raised an army and put George Washington in command--and to this day, American presidents exercise, in theory, absolute authority over the armed forces as heirs to Washington.

The Confederation was enough to beat the British. But its inadequacies were quite obvious by the time the war was over in 1783. It was clear that something better was required if the states were to have any sort of federal government.

The Confederation lacked the authority to conduct foreign or trade policy or to settle the urgent question of its own and the states' debts left over from the war. The Confederate Congress convened a new Philadelphia convention in 1787 to write a new Constitution. The delegates' guiding principle was to prepare a legal framework that would put into practice the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

... WE HOLD

THESE TRUTHS

TO BE SELF-EVIDENT:

THAT ALL MEN ARE

CREATED EQUAL,

THAT THEY ARE

ENDOWED BY

THEIR CREATOR

WITH CERTAIN

UNALIENABLE

RIGHTS; THAT

AMONG THESE

ARE LIFE,

LIBERTY AND THE

PURSUIT OF

HAPPINESS;

THAT TO SECURE

THESE RIGHTS,

GOVERNMENTS

ARE INSTITUTED

AMONG MEN,

DERIVING THEIR

JUST POWERS

FROM THE

CONSENT OF THE

GOVERNED ...

"We, the People ..."

These delegates who represented the states were careful of their privileges. But the principles of the Declaration prevailed. Delegates were bound to the view that government is the creation of the citizens , not the various states -- it has no other existence.

The preamble to the Constitution begins with the words "We, the People of the United States ...", and a great weight of history bears upon that simple phrase. Some prominent Americans opposed the Constitution because it curtailed the sovereignty of the states. We shall see what happened when 11 Southern states reaffirmed this opposition and seceded over slavery in 1861.

The preamble to the Constitution drawn up in 1787 reads: "We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America."

To proclaim that they were "the People", or that all men are created equal, was all very well, but a functioning constitution requires a more practical framework. To start with, the convention had to resolve the division of powers between the states and the federal government.

Defining the Separate Powers

There were 13 states in 1787: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North and South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia. The states were less than nations but more than the provinces of Europe. The powers of federal and state governments are carefully shared out in the Constitution, with the courts left to determine disputes between the two.

Then the Constitution had to lay out the powers of the various branches of the new government.

The Constitution provides in great detail for the election of the president -- but when that procedure was found to be unworkable, it was abandoned.

But there are also vague statements in the Constitution -- for instance, that the federal government shall regulate inter-state commerce.

The founders would have been pleased that their successors found enough flexibility in the Constitution to adapt it to new problems and new situations. It is no mere relic of the 18th century. It is a document in whose intentional vagueness succeeding generations have found answers to problems its authors never dreamt of.

A System of Checks and Balances

The heart of the Constitution was a system of checks and balances. An efficient executive was obviously necessary "to provide for the common defence", among other things, but Americans did not want a powerful monarch, or substitute monarch, dominating the legislature and the courts.

Distrust remained so strong that the executive's powers were hedged around with restrictions. This was the origin of the doctrine of the separation of powers, which provides that the executive, legislative and judicial functions of government are each independent of and equal to the others.

This is, as it was intended, a recipe for ineffectual, or at least very restricted, government.

The Separation of Powers

The doctrine of the separation of powers has limited presidents and Congress for two centuries, and has frequently frustrated the clear will of a majority of Americans. It remains as absolute now as ever. The other great separation, between the federal government in Washington and state governments, is less absolute. There has been a steady encroachment of federal power into local affairs.

The separation of powers broke down once in 1868, immediately after the Civil War, when Congress attempted, and nearly succeeded, in seizing permanent control of the executive and bending the judiciary to its wishes.

The most notorious failure of democratic principles in the Constitution of 1788 was that despite the ringing Declaration of 1776, all men were not equal.

Opponents of slavery assumed that it would wither away. In fact, with the development of the cotton industry, slavery expanded greatly in the early 19th century. The resulting dispute led to the most calamitous event in American history, the Civil War (1861-65).