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Jacob T. Levy
Thread It’s true that GOP Senators putting party ahead of country, the rule of law, security of American elections against foreign influence, inter-branch accountability, & basic integrity are basically the Founders’ nightmare, violating their core sense of virtue in office. But.
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
It’s also true that the Founders were just *wrong* about some important things. Parties, partisan elections, a loyal opposition w a constant incentive to expose the incumbent’s wrongdoing— these are a more reliable route to accountability *overall* than relying on Virtous Men. 2
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
There is no democracy (no “republic” if you like) under modern conditions without parties. As far as we know, there can’t be. They didn’t know that in 1787. They knew a lot! They were trying new things! In important ways what they did was very impressive in the circumstances. 3
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
But they didn’t know this important one, and they wrote their turned-out-to-be-false model of how things would work into our exceptionally-difficult-to-amend Constitution and procedures. 4
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
Impeachment— not only impeachment, but we’ll focus on that— isn’t well-designed for a system of parties. There’s never been a successful removal of a president— and that’s not because there were no presidents who should have been removed. 5
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
It works OK for the removal of not-officially-partisan judges. But the executive is different. Nixon was chased out of office with the threat of removal, but under the very unusual circumstances that the GOP had been all but locked out of Congressional power for 40 years... 6
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
*and* when the parties were still in their Jim-Crow-based cross-cutting ideological muddle— a situation unlikely to be repeated and based on conditions we wouldn’t *want* to see repeated. 7
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
The Nixon case fooled us into thinking the impeachment procedure wasn’t basically broken, if only we had virtuous heroes in the Senate in the Goldwater mode... and so we get disappointed in the Lamar!s of the world for not living up to the Founders’ ideals. 8
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
But that’s just not going to be a reliable mechanism for executive accountability in a world of parties. We need to think about what such a mechanism could be. /fun
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Jacob T. Levy 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
Ahem. "/fin." I don't need a special notation to mark the end of fun; I just need to be my usual spoilsport self.
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l'état n'est pas moi 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
When you have a dedicated group (representing a minority of the population) that puts "party ahead of country, the rule of law, security of American elections against foreign influence" with assists from the judiciary, it would be difficult to design a gov that can withstand it.
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l'état n'est pas moi 31. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @jtlevy
This is a round about way of saying that in a democracy commitment to those institutions and the rule of law are mandatory. Without that commitment, how can they stand?
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