With the three branches of government impaired, have we ever been further from the goal of establishing “a more perfect union?”
We can get lost in the details of daily politics. But looking at the big picture offers little reassurance. We are used to accusing the President of crippling American democracy by undermining long-held national norms. Attempts to stigmatize and even criminalize diversity programs at universities and elsewhere are only one category of this retrograde behavior. It is now apparent to the nation and most of the world that current our presidential leadership is in dire ruins. Every day Donald Trump provides new examples to lament. Combine this problem with ample evidence that the other two branches of government are also hobbled, and it seems we have drifted further from the goal of establishing “a more perfect union.”
If it is not enough that the Presidency has been shorn of its effectiveness and dignity, the third branch, the United States Supreme Court, has created in its own constitutional crisis. It now regularly yields to an overreaching President who seeks more power and less accountability. As for the second branch of Congress, it has been occupied by a party that has allowed the dismemberment of its formal constitutional powers, including the vital roles of war-making and spending. Passage of a bill for short-term funding of the federal government now counts as a significant legislative achievement.
It is painful to admit, but we are the unhappy recipients of an inverted trifecta that has undermined all three governmental branches. Taking their own paths to ineptness, these frail branches have left us with few chances to further the nation’s collective aspirations. Instead, the branches now function to concentrate power rather than distribute it, reward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans, and accept curbing birthright freedoms. Never has the Constitution looked less relevant as a statement of defined powers as it does now. Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center should spend less time celebrating this increasingly bludgeoned document and more time urgently mobilizing people and ideas to strengthen it. It’s a sad day when we fail to notice that we are honoring what is actually disappearing before our eyes.
To be sure, we have some courageous members of Congress. And there are important lower federal courts that have upheld judicial ideals, at least until the Supreme Court weighs in. But the Supreme Court has now been given powers that alarms even traditional political conservatives. The decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the door for elections to be bought. The court diasasterously ruled that campaign finance is a form of free speech, releasing tsunamis of private money into sometimes tiny congressional races. We may vote this fall, but corporations and others with deep pockets have far more chances to influence outcomes by throwing money at all the modern tools of marketing. Few decisions have done more to harm the idea of one-person-one-vote.
The court has also granted nearly complete presidential immunity from prosecution and total freedom to replace any figure in the myriad federal agencies such as the FCC. No efficient and honest federal bureaucrat is immune from the dead hand of presidential removal. By the end of Trump’s term our agencies will be filled with people who would mostly prefer that their oversight responsibilities be eliminated.
Whether the GOP dominated Congress will be revived by more activist members and Democrats remains to be seen. In the short term our best hope for the recovery of a functioning national government lies with changes in the leadership and competence of the next Congress.
