Americans have long believed that the 1787 Constitutional Convention created a foolproof political system.
The Constitution divided authority between a central, "federal," government and the state governments. It separated governing powers between legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government so they could "check" and "balance" each other.
This was supposed to protect Americans from oppression and abuse by wicked individuals who managed to worm their way into important offices.
If anything, the Constitution's provisions limiting the federal government's power worked all too well and resulted in the Civil War of 1861-1865. The amendments enacted after the Civil War strengthened the central government, apparently fixing the Constitution's principal defect.
Until recently, it appeared that the Founding Fathers had succeeded in designing a political system that could not be captured by forces hostile to the general welfare. But recent experience suggests that all political systems probably have weak spots which opportunists will discover, sooner or later.
The weak spot in our system, it turns out, may be the judicial branch of government.
The Founding Fathers did not see it that way. Alexander Hamilton (writing in The Federalist along with John Jay and James Madison under the pen name Publius) argued that the courts would be the least dangerous branch of government.
Unlike the chief executive, courts would not command the army. Unlike the Congress, they would not control the government's purse strings or have the power to legislate and tax. (Federalist #78.)
The apparent vulnerability of all political systems to being gamed is not an entirely bad thing.
An excellent example in the United States was how the U.S. Supreme Court was targeted when it proved impossible to get civil rights legislation through Congress.
A carefully staged series of cases challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine with which the Supreme Court had upheld racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ultimately led to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, kicking off a general movement toward getting rid of segregation.
Given public attitudes at the time, especially with racial attitudes in the South and the political leverage of Southern members of Congress, it would have been impossible for Congress or the president to kick start desegregation. But the courts could, and did.
Another positive example of gaming a political system was demonstrated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, and before him Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia. These gentlemen wormed their way up to the top of their countries' respective Communist parties, then pulled out their horns and proceeded to reform their systems.
Dubcek, however, was overthrown by Soviet troops who invaded Czechoslovakia, and Gorbachev managed to destroy the Soviet system by trying to reform it.
Poor Gorbachev! "No good deed goes unpunished."
The Supreme Court, unfortunately, also has proved vulnerable to being gamed by special economic interests seeking to weaken the federal government and reverse much of American progress since the Civil War.
The game plan here involved setting up an organization, the Federalist Society, that for several decades has been grooming future judges to reinterpret the Constitution.
Like the Civil Rights movement, this game plan has begun producing the intended results, as several of the Supreme Court's startling decisions in recent years have demonstrated.
It is ironic that the current gamers chose to name themselves the Federalist Society, since the original Federalists were in favor of a strong national government.
We live in a world that is loaded with immense dangers as well as huge opportunities. A weakened federal government will be poorly equipped to fend off the dangers and take advantage of the opportunities.
Americans should think carefully before supporting the special interests that would weaken our national government.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981. His most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon and other states. Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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