“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.” -Thomas Paine
In this series I’ve tried to make the case that the American political system is – and to varying degrees always has been – so heavily tilted in favor of the wealth class that people of average or less than average means are effectively frozen out of it. That for the American left to ‘unmarginalize’ itself means both thinking and working outside the box – i.e., that remaining within the accepted parameters as defined by the current political establishment is the same as accepting permanent irrelevancy.
The gospel according to people like Moulitsas, Bowers and many other Democratic Party activists states that all it will take for liberals to wrest power away from the reactionary right is for us to become more skillful political players – that is, recruit better candidates, and become better communicators, fund-raisers, organizers, etc. I’m sorry to say that I categorically reject that construct. Their solution only works if you’re playing in an honest game, and the fundamental problem is that ours isn’t. What I’ve been trying to do so far in this series is explain why that’s so.
In Part 2 I discussed the very origins of our system of government, how the great majority of the framers of the Constitution were in fact members of the aristocracy, and therefore naturally sympathetic to its interests. Also how even that faction, led by James Madison, which to some extent believed in the notion of government ‘by the people’, still favored a system in which the wealth class would effectively maintain a dominant position. In this installment I will attempt to explain exactly how that was accomplished, both in terms of the structure of the Constitution itself, and also the manner in which it was implemented.
Probably the most obvious means by which the framers tilted power towards the wealthy was in establishing the senior legislative body on the basis of geographic, rather than proportional, representation. Smaller states naturally tended to be more rural and agrarian, dominated both economically and politically by a relatively small number of powerful landowners. In other words, the biggest slice of power, relatively speaking, was accorded to what might be called neo-feudalists, who could be expected to be the most reliably regressive and exclusionary in their political tendencies. And of course, this geographic bias was carried over into the composition of the Electoral College as well.
The second mechanism that was used to create a protective buffer between aristocrats and commoners was to place the election of Senators in the hands of state legislators, rather than giving that power directly to the citizenry. Even in the 18th Century, it must have been obvious to the framers that Senators who were voted into office by fellow politicians, rather than directly by the general public, would naturally be more inclined to favor the interests of the capital class over those of the labor class.
Another constitutional provision, and one which I think has been much overlooked, that works in favor of the wealth class is that which grants lifetime appointments to members of the federal judiciary. Just ask yourself – who typically wins appointment to the most prestigious judicial positions? Obviously, it tends to be those with the most impressive legal pedigrees, both in terms of education and subsequent employment. And who gets to go to the best schools and work in the top firms? Overwhelmingly, members of the economic upper echelon, or else those relentless climbers (Clarence Thomas comes to mind) who are most hell-bent on becoming part of it.
Certainly it’s true that jurists tend to be a somewhat quirky bunch, and the possibility always exists for a judge or Supreme Court justice to break out of the mold and show a far greater degree of enlightenment in his rulings than his background and training would ever suggest, in the manner of such recent justices as Blackmun, Stevens and Suiter. Still, the upper class does not require 100% fealty in order to achieve their aims. The fact remains that putting aristocrats on the federal bench for life terms, with carte blanche authority to interpret the Constitution in whatever way they see fit, is not a formulation designed to favor the interests of the masses over those of the economic elite.
Finally, there is the matter of the Presidential election process, a very murky and ambiguously defined provision that has been a source of continuing controversy since the earliest days of the republic. Indeed, even many politically astute individuals appear to have little understanding of their forefathers ‘original intent’ as it pertained to selection of the nation’s chief executive. For instance, nowhere does the Constitution ever mention either direct or indirect popular voting for President. Article II, Section 1 merely states:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Randall Holcombe, a professor of economics at Florida State University, published this very interesting and perceptive essay in the immediate wake of the Election 2000 debacle. He begins by stating flatly:
The process was never intended to be democratic. The first presidents were appointed by elites, not elected by the masses. Not until 1820s, with the rise of Andrew Jackson, did popular voting have a role in the selection of presidents.
Holcombe then goes on to offer this interpretation of how the process was supposed to function according to the Constitution’s architects:
The Founders intended for the electoral college to be composed of knowledgeable electors, as a kind of search committee to forward a list of the top candidates for the presidency to the House, which would then choose the president except in cases where there was a consensus among electors. But the system never worked this way. John Quincy Adams was the first president who did not receive an electoral majority, meaning that the nation had selected presidents for more than three decades without ever having a president selected in the House.
Over those decades, the methods that states used to select their electors had changed so that rather than having state legislatures choose them, they were chosen by the electorate directly. Furthermore, electors represented specific candidates instead of being chosen for their ability to select good candidates. Thus, in effect, there was popular voting for president despite the process specified in the Constitution, and if the president was in fact elected by popular vote, Jackson’s supporters believed that he should have been selected as president in 1824.
In other words, the general public was never supposed to figure into the whole process at all. Except that things never actually worked out according to the framers’ intentions, due to the fact that they left the specific mechanism used to select Electors up to the discretion of the individual states. But it is still very clear that their preferred methodology was something far removed from allowing the Executive to be chose according to popular will. And the system as it exists even today, with the extra weighting in favor of small population states, and the near-universal winner-take-all aspect that effectively reduces the contest to a few relatively small and not necessarily representative geographic areas, continues to be highly undemocratic.
Finally, it’s important to realize that while the Declaration of Independence is remembered for that inspirational assertion that ‘all men are created equal’, it’s clear from the manner in which our newly minted system of government was implemented that said equality was presumed to vanish shortly thereafter. In point of fact, originally the only people allowed any access to the ballot were white male property owners. And in some states, suffrage was further restricted to the adherents of certain favored religions.
In sum, I think it’s quite clear from any objective reading of America’s history that the whole thrust of our political system has been heavily elitist and exclusionary dating back to the nation’s inception. Granted, as the decades have passed and history has unfolded, many of the original mechanisms used to frustrate the popular will have been either modified or eliminated entirely. I refer specifically to such historical milestones as the granting of voting rights to former slaves (1870), to women (1920), and direct popular election of senators (1913).
At the same time, I think it is crucial to realize that, much like a shark’s teeth, even as some of the mechanisms that helped preserve the wealth class’s favored position fell by the wayside, others were developed to take their place. The net result being that there was in fact no diminution of the aristocracy’s position of dominance at all – if anything, I would say quite the contrary. What I would consider a limited, but still functional democracy 200 years ago has become in most respects a hollow sham, with real power more and more residing exclusively in the hands of the most rabidly reactionary and aggressively anti-democratic elements of the power elite.
How the current generation of aristocrats maintains its monopolistic control of the political system will be the subject of the next installment. Which unfortunately I won’t be able to post for awhile, probably two weeks or so. This is on account of having to go off-line for most of the rest of this month, for reasons too convoluted and uninteresting to bother enumerating here. However, I do intend to continue as soon as I get re-connected. And to those readers who’ve expressed their interest in these articles, and/or support for my point of view, I want to once again express my sincere appreciation.