On the Futility of Divided Government at the Empire Level: The Case of the U.S.A.

Rick Perry, when he was the Republican governor of Texas running for re-election, said his primary opponent, Senator Kay Hutchison, was spending tax dollars too freely in Washington. He meant that she was too Washington. He claimed that she didn't get what he called, “Texas values.” Then, he added something really telling—something that went beyond his electoral contest: “Washington’s one-size-fits-all approaches simply don’t work. They want more control of your dollars and your life, and they want it now. We surrender that to them with peril.” His statement is worthy of our reflection even long after Perry's re-election campaign.

The frustrating matter during the summer of 2011 of whether (and how) the debt ceiling of the U.S. ought to have been raised shows just how difficult it is to get all of the factions on board in passing a law. When both major parties must agree for a bill to become a law, “the opposition” is part of the government. No parliamentary system would mandate that a government (i.e., governing coalition) must get its opposition on board for laws to be enacted. This is true enough even on the level of EU and US states; for a diverse union of such states to require that almost every faction agree is foolhardy. In other words, “divided government” at the empire-level gives the inherent diversity too much leverage with which to block governmental action.

Why doesn’t a one-size-fits-all approach not work in the United States at the federal level? First, an empire consisting of member states or republics is inherently diverse, given the scale of the countries themselves. Imperial-level legislation should take into account the different political entities that constitute or are members of the empire, even if the legislation applies directly to individuals (rather than to the member states). Otherwise, pressure from the real differences will build—potentially blowing the Union apart eventually.

Second, governments have ruling and opposition parties for a reason: getting all of them to agree for a bill to become a law is unrealistic given the extent of ideological distance from the far right to the far left. Compromise is difficult enough within a governing coalition. Even though having a “divided government” allows for better checks and balances, it is a recipe for nothing getting done. One size does not fit for all parties, which are themselves coalitions. Perhaps we like divided government because we are so scared about what a governing coalition might actually do. As a consequence, gridlock.

On European and American federalism compared , see Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon. See also, "American and European Federalism, a short critique of Perry's book on federalism, Fed Up!

Putin Likened Protesters to "Weak Birds"

At the conclusion of the 2012 Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Russia, the host president, Vladimir Putin, likened the birds that had been following his motorized glider south one day to the Russians who did not follow him--in other words, the protesters. “Only the weak ones,” he quipped, "didn’t follow me.” Elaborating, he added of the birds, “not all of the cranes flew, and the leader, the pilot, has to be blamed because he was too fast in gaining speed and altitude and they were just lagging behind; they couldn’t catch up.” It is interesting that he was blaming himself as well as referring to the lagging birds, and thus protesters, as weak. Was Putin really blaming himself though? Furthermore, doesn't blaming the protesters contradict the notion in the transformational-leadership literature that such leaders build up rather than push down their followers?

Putin could not have been entirely objective on the protests against him.      

Source: Democracy Chronicles

Putin stated that “during certain circumstances, when there is strong wind and bad weather, the pilot has to lift very speedily—otherwise the vehicle, the flying machine, could overturn and capsize.” In other words, Russia would collapse were he to have relaxed or compromised on his agenda for change. 

Is it really the case that a political leader’s transformational paradigm must be implemented quickly or the government, economy or society will collapse? Is a glider stalling and falling really comparable to a government slowing down on reform? I contend that the latter is oriented to graduations, whereas a stall in the air happens all at once (i.e., a qualitative change). 
Was there really the political, economic or social equivalent of “strong wind and bad weather” facing Russia at the time? In the 1990's in the wake of a collapsed Soviet Union, governmental and economic transformation was clearly needed as soon as possible. In fact the rise of the suddenly rich Russian oligarchs can be taken as an indication that the government did not produce adequate economic laws soon enough. In 2012, it could be argued that Putin was applying “leadership in a crisis” to “leadership in the status quo” in his own time. In the midst of a tsunami, for example, there is not time to question or debate the directions from a leader; people must get to higher ground as soon as possible. Russia was not facing such a massive wave in 2012. Therefore, Putin's argument that he had not been at fault because he was avoiding stalling so the economy and/or government would not collapse is valid. 
Had Putin been willing to take some responsibility for the protests, he may not have characterized the protesters as weak. According to the transformational leadership literature, doing so undercuts a leader's ability to transform an economy, government, and society. In Transformational Leadership, James Burns defines transformational leadership in terms of developing the capacities of followers, which presumably includes the followers being able to become leaders themselves. Nietzsche would beg to differ, claiming that the weak cannot be weak; they are simply not constituted to be strong. The strong too, cannot be but strong. I suspect that Putin would agree with the nineteenth-century European philosopher. In the transformational leadership literature, leadership is portrayed as stronger than followership because a leader can encourage followers to develop their own inner authority, which in turn can be used in becoming a leader. Plato's notion of justice, wherein reason is in control of the passions, is consistent with the notion that inner authority (i.e. self-discipline) can enable a person to be a leader. A just polis, Plato claims in The Republic, is one in which a government uses reason to control the passions in society. 

It is possible that Putin's comment regarding the protesters actually reveals Putin as weaker. According to Nietzsche, the truly strong feel no need to dominate as they have a surplus of self-confidence and pleasure from exercising power to go after protesters. "What are these parasites to me really?" such a political leader would say. "Let them have their protests; my sights are on turning my transformational paradigm into reality."  In fact, the strong are not stingy in giving away the surplus; they have more than enough. The best source of such power, according to Nietzsche, is from the inner strength to master an internal intractable instinctual urge. Doing so gives the strong such pleasure from power that they are not motivated to be cruel to an opposition even as it protests. Put another way, in trying to snuff out threats to his power, Putin demonstrated a lack of self-confidence and strength.

Source:

David Herszenhorn and Steven Lee Myers, “For Putin, a Flight of Fancy at a Summit Meeting’s Close,” The New York Times, September 10, 2012.

On Nietzsche applied to power in business, see On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management (available at Amazon)

Alan Greenspan on the Self-Regulatory Market

Two days after the LTCM bailout was agreed to in 1998, a worried Alan Greenspan, leaning toward raising rates at the time, cut the federal funds rate. It was not enough to calm the markets, and he cut it again three weeks later. . . . It was not the self-correcting powers of the markets but aggressive central bank intervention plus a new round of irrational speculation that provided a floor under the downward financial prices and the calamitous consequences of bad Wall Street decisions. It was not even the LTCM rescue alone by private banks that saved Wall Street” Madrick, p. 281). “Alan Greenspan learned no lessons from these events about the inherent instability of a completely free market in finance. He still insisted markets regulate themselves” (Madrick, p. 282).

Analysis:

Milton Friedman believed that government regulation keeps markets from being efficient; he assumed that the market mechanism is capable of regulating itself. That increasing uncertainty and risk might reach a point that a market mechanism would freeze up, or collapse, rather than simply incorporate the increased volatility through pricing is a point extrinsic to the efficient market thesis. That theory submits that markets tend toward equilibrium, rather than spiraling out of control.
Testifying before Congress after the credit crisis of 2008, Alan Greenspan was asked by Henry Waxman (D-Calif) whether the government-averted credit-market collapse had prompted any revision of the retired Fed Chairman’s economic paradigm. Greenspan admitted to a flaw in the ointment of self-regulatory market theory. In spite of 40 years of evidence to the contrary, official Washington’s font of economic wisdom had drawn a blank.
Lest the human mind be left without an operative paradigm by which one can make sense of the world, by mid June 2011, Greenspan had mentally reduced the fly in the ointment to a mere footnote. Asked by Charlie Rose on The Charlie Rose Show what how the crisis had changed his understanding of the market mechanism and economics, Greenspan admitted his surprise that bank CEOs do not always operate their banks so as to keep them solvent. This is how the financial crisis of 2008 had changed his view of the market mechanism after all. Of course, such a fault could be attributed to distortive government regulation (e.g. regulation Q limiting deposit interest) rather than to some inherent weakness in the market mechanism being able to regulate itself.
Greenspan had backtracked; he had unlearned his lesson much like an alcoholic “forgets” that he or she has admitted to having a drinking problem.  Faced with a fundamental flaw in a paradigm on which it relies, the human mind can succumb to retreating to the safety of denial. In his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn tells us that it can be a generation before the downfall of a reigning paradigm is finally recognized, after the current proselytizers have passed and the people to come, without a vested interest in the prevailing paradigm, have taken their place. Perhaps it is only the human mind writ large (i.e, intergenerational) that advances, or really learns.
Lest we have to wait for the dead to bury themselves, we can affirm and acknowledge right now that the market-mechanism is not inherently self-regulating, and that this flaw is not caused by government regulation. Instead, markets can collapse—just as a human being freezes up from fear when risk and uncertainty hit a certain threshold—only to be revived by governmental intervention.  

Source:

Jeff Madrick, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 2011).

See also Skip Worden, Essays on the Financial Crisis, available at Amazon.

Elected Representatives in a Republic: Is Any Sense of Duty Remaining?

I suspect the notion of duty had by 2018 taken a rear seat, pushed out by self-centered ambition, in many if not most democracies in the world. In the ancient world, office-holding by lot stemmed the impact of people desiring office. Of the latter, the desire for personal gain would, I submit, be more likely. In contrast, finding oneself holding an office by lot was more likely to be accompanied by a sense of duty rather than personal ambition. Of course, ordinary citizens could find themselves voting in councils or legislatures—but would that necessarily be so bad?

In the American experiment, office-holding was originally thought of as a civic duty of the wealthy class. Landless citizens were cut off from even voting. George Washington did his duty as the first U.S. president, then went home to Virginia; he had done his duty (and then some). Once he decided not to run again, he did not, while still president, call it quits even if he was personally done with the office. I submit that that sense of duty had been lost by the twenty-first century.

After the 2018 midterm Congressional election, many U.S. House representatives who would retired or were not re-elected conveniently decided that their term would end early. “Call it the revenge of the lame ducks. Many lawmakers, relegated to cubicles as incoming members take their offices, have been skipping votes in the weeks since House Republicans were swept from power in the midterm elections, and Republican leaders are unsure whether they will ever return.”[1] The skipping of votes connotes an absence of a sense of duty; being in Congress in such cases is really about the office-holder, rather than his or her constituents or patriotism. Duty to oneself is not even a pale reflection of duty to the other two.

In the midst of the hegemony of duty to self, corruption can be expected to become a norm in the halls of a government. We could expect self-enriching schemes rather than a duty to fulfill the office. In the case of 2018, the U.S. Government was poised to shutdown, as the two major parties were in a stalemate over funding a southern-border wall. Duty to return to Washington in case one’s vote may facilitate the government remaining in operation would seem to be a relatively clear duty to which a legislator would be bound. Yet a major problem with duty, as with other moral principles, is it’s voluntary nature; legislators in eyesight of the end of their term know they can get away with staying away, whether out of being tired of politics or having a new lucrative opportunity in lobbying or business.

What is a republic, really? Surely some presence of a common good that needs to be looked after in its own right is involved. Who is tasked with this looking after? The government of a republic, no doubt. So office-holders should (i.e., in principle) be foremost oriented to putting the public good first, for no one else in a society is tasked by nature or occupation with putting the interests of the whole before those of the parts. In deciding to end a term of office early, for whatever extrinsic reason, the representatives in the U.S. House in late 2018 demonstrated that the voters had erred by electing people who were not in fact willing (or able) to look after the whole, to keep an eye primarily on the steering of the ship so it would not crash. tasked with steering and looking outward Knowing that the only sector of society tasked with looking after the entire ship and thus for any obstacles ahead is the government, those representatives acted selfishly in spite of the fact that they knew a government showdown would soon come up ahead and the government—that part of society specifically tasked with protecting the ship—could shut down. Such a mentality goes beyond selfishness to include a reckless disregard for the ship, which those representatives had doubtlessly lauded many times when doing so had been in their own interests.

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[1] Julie Hirshfeld and Emily Cochrane, “A Shutdown Looms. Can the G.O.P. Get Lawmakers to Show Up to Vote?” The New York Times, December 16, 2018.