The Beautiful Perversity of our Government

Our government is an inefficient mess-Working As Designed

Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Three, Issue 21

And the wrong words make you listen
In this criminal world
Remember it's true, loyalty is valuable
But our lives are valuable too

The Sunday Reader, Oct 27, 2024

I am by nature a creature of the night. My brain doesn’t really run smoothly until the sun is setting, and the words really began to flow as the rest of the world winds down into sleep. I have an office on the second floor of our home, and for decades I have repaired there to write in the after-dark quiet as the rest of the family slept.

My children were well familiar with this, of course, and as each entered high school they began dropping by to discuss the broader implications of the things they learned in school. Now one of the many blessings children bestow on you is the gift of humility. My children have always regarded me as something of an affable knucklehead.

One day the oldest dropped in to discuss an extremely annoying person she’d met in school. There was this guy named Socrates, and he answered every question with a question. Can you believe this guy? So annoying!

I explained that the Socratic Method helped people work out answers through their own logic, and was therefore a powerful teaching tool that I used in my sporadic forays into academia. Oldest daughter considered this for a bit, and then said Dad? Do all your students hate you?

Yes, my darling, but not because of the Socratic Method.

All three children took the Advanced Placement American Government course in high school, and all three came to me frustrated, and for the same reason.

Why is the United States government so inefficient, so ineffective? Why is it so hard to get anything done?

WAD, as we nerds say. Working As Designed.

And when they looked puzzled, I said Do you know who was efficient?

Nazis. Nazis really got stuff done.

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 after a series of Nazi Party electoral victories. Within a decade Germany went from the dregs of the Weimar Republic’s depression to the industrial power that ruled continental Europe and had Volkswagens rolling off the assembly line like clockwork.

Of course there were a few drawbacks to Nazi rule.

World War II. The Holocaust. The Gestapo.

Tyrants and despots in general are very efficient. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Dissent tends to be less strenuous when dissenters are shot in the head.

There’s a sad old joke that says our Republic is the worst possible system of government...excepting all the other ones. But our system is actually wickedly clever.

If mankind is inherently venal and corrupt, how do you design a system of government that doesn’t ended up corrupted?

Our government is famously inefficient, choked with checks and balances until it’s impossible to Get Things Done. Nazis and other tyrants, on the other hand, are super efficient, which is good when you get Volkswagon and trains that run on time, and not so good when you get World War II and the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields, the Rape of Nanking, and whatever is currently going on in Cuba where the power grid has apparently collapsed.

Others have tried to design the best government, predicated on the inherent goodness of mankind. Hence To Each According to Their Needs; From Each According to Their Abilities, and the constant stream of Utopias.

All of which have run hard aground on the shoals of human nature.

If mankind is inherently venal and corrupt, how do you design a system of government that doesn’t end up corrupted? The American Founders answered this conundrum by inventing a system that's perversely inefficient. The Founders focused on humanity’s inherent venality and corruption, and built a political fight club cleverly unbalanced to the point where it is pretty much impossible for any one side to control everything.

We’re all familiar with the three branches of the Federal government: Congress, which is the Legislative Branch; The Presidency, which is the Executive Branch; and the Judiciary, headed by The Supreme Court of the United States.

But the entire federal government also competes with the 50 state governments, and their judiciaries. Look at all the initiatives launched to much ballyhoo by either the states, or the White House, only to immediately end up stalled in court. Here in Texas its almost impossible to keep track of how many times Washington is suing Austin, and Austin is suing Washington, and over what.

WAD.

Look closer at the Federal government, and see how it is set up for never-ending conflict. We have A Very Important Election next month! But how much will the federal government change? Look at how the staggered terms force conflict:

• The House of Representatives is based on population; the entire chamber is up for re-election every two years

• The presidency is up for election every four years

• Senators serve six years, with one-third of the chamber up for election every two years

• Supreme Court justices are appointed for life

So it’s impossible to sweep all three branches of government in a single election. Making things even more difficult, this Very Important Election has two-thirds of the Senate sitting on the sidelines; they’re not even running. And the staggering of terms means many incumbents are forced to swim against the political currents. Think of it this way: the senators elected in 2020, the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, will never once stand for election while Joe Biden is in the White House.

It's not a perfect system by any means. The constant conflict is wearying. And there was a bit of a fuss – a half-decade, truthfully – over Abraham Lincoln’s election to the White House. But our Constitutional experiment has proven remarkably resilient, especially when you consider the alternatives.

Consider the French. The American Revolution occurred in 1776; the French Revolution in 1789. The US Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. The French First Republic was founded on September 21, 1792.

We’re still on that same Constitution.

The French are on their Fifth Republic. And that’s not even counting the Vichy Nazi puppet French government.

And that Fifth Republic is currently in a bit of trouble.

After his party received a thorough thrashing in the European Union parliamentary elections, French President Emmanuel Macron decided to get back in winning form by dissolving the French Legislature and calling snap elections.

This turned out to be a bad plan.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the first round for the first time in history, winning a third of the seats. Macron’s Ensemble coalition fell to 20 percent.

France being France, things were not over. The French have bunches of political parties running candidates. The establishment parties prepped for the second round of voting by pulling all but their top candidate from each race to try to thwart Le Pen.

Macron lost. Again.

The establishment coalition pulled ahead of the National Rally group, but fell well behind the leftist New Popular Front.

So! Elections are important and settle all things political, no? New left-wing government, right?

Of course not.

Macron stalled for months, and then in September appointed Michael Barnier as Prime Minister – despite Barnier’s party’s dismal showing in the elections – to head up a new government comprised of the same old establishment types.

So for those of you keeping score at home, here’s a recap: Macron’s establishment coalition lost badly in the European Union Parliament elections. They decided to reestablish their dominance by calling snap legislative elections, but lost to the right-wing National Rally. They then horse-traded candidates with a bunch of other parties for the second round of voting…and lost again, this time to the leftist New Popular Front.

And so after losing three straight elections…the same people are in charge, a situation France’s Le Monde called “France’s unprecedented and dangerous political situation.”

So what happens next? Who knows? It’s France! Maybe the whole mess collapses and is replaced by the Sixth Republic. Or maybe nothing.

On this side of the pond, meanwhile, we’re about to have an election next month. And when all the votes are counted, and the confetti swept up, and the winners celebrated, and the losers consoled…life will go on. The sun will come up, and the Republic will still stand.

I hear there will be another election in a couple of years. I hear it will be Really, Really Important. But the world is changing, says I, and that election will be just as irrelevant as the 2024 vote.