Is "Gridlock" a Good Enough Reason to Vote for McCain?
David Brooks hints that the answer is, “maybe” —
By the time the recession is in full force, Democrats will probably be running the government. Barack Obama will probably be in the White House. Democrats will have a comfortable majority in the House and will control between 56 and 60 seats in the Senate.
…
If Bear Stearns and A.I.G. can get bailouts, then so can car companies, airlines and other corporations with direct links to Main Street.Second, there will be more stimulus packages.
…
Third, we’re in for a Keynesian renaissance. The Fed has little room to stimulate the economy, so Democrats will use government outlays to boost consumption.
…
What we’re going to see, in short, is the Gingrich revolution in reverse and on steroids. There will be a big increase in spending and deficits. In normal times, moderates could have restrained the zeal on the left. In an economic crisis, not a chance.
Brooks is no libertarian, but his argument certainly is. It’s an argument I’ve made in other contexts: Vote for gridlock.
There is, however, a major problem with “voting for gridlock” this time around. Two in fact:
- John Paul Stevens
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
For those who need a refresher course:
Although predictions about Supreme Court vacancies are notoriously chancy, there is a strong possibility that John Paul Stevens, who will turn 89 next April, will leave the Court during the next presidential term. Some observers of the Court also believe that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 75 years old and has suffered from health problems, is likely to resign during the next four years. Moreover, David H. Souter, who will be 70 next year, is rumored to be considering retirement. Since each of these “liberal” Justices has determined the outcome of many cases decided by a five-to-four vote, the replacement of even one of these Justices with a more “conservative” Justice could decisively alter the Court’s decisions on a multitude of issues, including abortion, affirmative action, criminal procedure, and the scope of federalism and the commerce clause. Meanwhile, the next president has the power to substantially shape the character of the lower federal judiciary.
It is of course true that these three justices are far from a libertarian’s dream: they each voted wrong on Kelo and Heller, among other jurisprudential sins.
But the notion of a McCain-packed Supreme Court, one that would definitively tilt against substantive due process, toward expanded executive and wartime power, against the First Amendment and toward deference for its own sake? It’s simply unthinkable. I’d rather have trillion-dollar deficits than “strict constructionism on steroids,” to borrow Brooks’ analogy.
And there’s another reason not to abandon the Supreme Court to the radical social conservatives. If nothing else, maintaining the (admittedly simplistic) “5-4 balance” (or “4-4-1,” if you buy into the notion that Anthony Kennedy deliberately steers himself into the deciding vote whenever he can) helps to keep constitutional law on the front pages (and the op-ed pages, and the blogs). Who’s going to bother thinking about commercial speech, or about standing in Establishment Clause cases, or about revisiting sexual orientation as a suspect class, or about copyright law, or about labor law, or about Guantanamo and habeas corpus, if the cases are always 3-0 in the circuit courts or 7-2 in the Supreme Court? Only the 5-4 cases make us think — and write, and debate, and argue.
Given my view that we are, thanks to the financial crisis, entering a new — and dark — era of what was once called remnant libertarianism, about the best libertarians can hope for in the foreseeable future is to just to keep the dialog going. Replacing the “liberal” justices with other “liberal” justices — and thereby maintaining the tension on the Court — helps to accomplish that.
What’s a few trillion dollars added to national debt compared to that?
Previously:
–Should Post-Bush Democrats “Pack” the Supreme Court?
Filed under: Constitutional Issues, Law, Libertarianism, Politics
One other argument against gridlock this particular election is that recent history shows it is mostly effective only when we have a Dem President with at least one Republican house.
Republican Presidents, with their ever-increasing bent on expanding executive power, turn out to be pretty willing to allow the expansion of social spending as a tradeoff for getting expanded "defense" spending (maybe especially since more social spending = more executive power). So a divided government with a GOP President does relatively little to slow down the growth of government spending. Also, as we've found out the last 8 years, a unified GOP government turns out – counterintuitively – to be significantly worse than a unified Dem government.
There's an article in Reason this month (not online, though) that details all this, i.e., that government spending is by far most tolerable with a Dem President (and GOP House/Senate) over the last 40 or 50 years, pretty gawdawful with a GOP President (and Dem House/Senate), only slightly more gawdawful with a Dem monopoly, and completely intolerable under a GOP monopoly. Point being that there's relatively little difference, from a gridlock perspective, between an Obama victory and a McCain victory in the short term. Where the big difference comes in is the intermediate-to-long term, where there is at least a theoretical chance of getting a divided government with Obama as President (which is easily the least-bad scenario), and a theoretical chance of getting a unified government with McCain as President (which is easily the worst scenario).
As for your point about a new 'remnant' era, I'd say that's probably pretty consistent with my coalition-shifting theories. The Dems, for the foreseeable future, are probably going to maintain their anti-market rhetoric and disposition (though I note that their actions and rhetoric in the last 20-25 years have not been as anti-market as they were in the previous 40 years or so – but that's a low bar), since it's worked for them for so long. Meanwhile, the flight of the "libertarians" from the GOP, thanks to their civil and social liberties positions, is going to allow (and necessitate) a "new" GOP centered on "National Greatness" and "Sam's Club" conservatism.
Eventually, the "new" GOP will pull enough populists out of the Dem coalition to allow (and necessitate) the Dems to start adopting libertarian(ish) viewpoints on economic issues. The big question, I think, is how long it will take for this transformation of the political coalitions to complete. Until that time, I think you're probably correct – we're back to reliving the "remnant" days.
I don't know that I can predict how long the remnant days will last, but I'm starting to think that the closest parallel to this election in terms of its transformational effects is going to wind up being 1920 rather than 1932, with Bush playing the role of Woodrow Wilson, McCain that of James Cox, and Mike Huckabee that of FDR (yeah, I know, Huckabee's not a VP candidate, but his effect on the GOP due to his primary campaign is going to be similar to FDR's effect on the Dems). On the flip side, I don't think the personality comparisons are as apt, but the larger point is that 1920 was the year that the Republicans started to reject "Progressivism."
I know my state will go to Obama, so my voting really doesn't make much of a difference. However pretty much the only reason I'm voting for Obama is because of the supreme court. As gay Americans we actually stand to lose a lot more than others if McCain nominates the next two Supreme Court justices (and an even scarier thought, McCain croaks and Palin puts them up!).
I tend to think though after this election, with so many people not liking either candidate, with the crap that went on between Hil and Obama, that we could finally see a true third party rise with a lot of support from the American people.