His post: Democracy at Work
Professor
Great post. Good to attack procedural problems, try to uphold proper procedure, whatever that might one day turn out to be to actually get things done effectively.
Our system was designed more or less to drift, mostly, not to get things done effectively.
The founders did not trust a powerful federal government, for the reasons one can imagine.
One reason might include such wild notions as that a more powerful government might try to unite and or consolidate them more firmly together, or even try to prevent them from seceding if they wished. It might even have forced them to join together into a consolidated colony, which had been tried before by the British and failed.
So, drift has been the general rule, not just because of the separation of powers, but also because of the two party system resulting quite often in politically opposed branches, or opposed houses within Congress, or the Court against an adverse Congress.
Filibuster is rather like a more specialized, accelerated, aggressive form of short term drift only within Congress, and mostly now as you point out in the Senate, to avert something important actually getting done.
But the concept of filibuster, as a species of drift, is perfectly in keeping with the founders' views of the role of the federal government in general.
All the best
Great post. Good to attack procedural problems, try to uphold proper procedure, whatever that might one day turn out to be to actually get things done effectively.
Our system was designed more or less to drift, mostly, not to get things done effectively.
The founders did not trust a powerful federal government, for the reasons one can imagine.
One reason might include such wild notions as that a more powerful government might try to unite and or consolidate them more firmly together, or even try to prevent them from seceding if they wished. It might even have forced them to join together into a consolidated colony, which had been tried before by the British and failed.
So, drift has been the general rule, not just because of the separation of powers, but also because of the two party system resulting quite often in politically opposed branches, or opposed houses within Congress, or the Court against an adverse Congress.
Filibuster is rather like a more specialized, accelerated, aggressive form of short term drift only within Congress, and mostly now as you point out in the Senate, to avert something important actually getting done.
But the concept of filibuster, as a species of drift, is perfectly in keeping with the founders' views of the role of the federal government in general.
All the best
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