Two Strange Discoveries (Two Days Before Election Day)

One.

This morning I listened to a radio broadcast of one of my favorite political commentators, Mara Liasson. The content of the show revolved around all the political drama of this election week. But one assertion Ms. Liasson made struck me especially: She summarized a Trump and Republican party position that greater voter turnout hurts the Republican party. She indicated that there exists some wide agreement in the GOP that taking actions to limit voter turnout serves as an important party strategy.

Perhaps I have heard this before, but just this morning--maybe because of this election sharpening my political senses--it really sunk in. What a strange thing! In order to assert that limiting voter turnout is better for one's party, it seems that one must necessarily believe something else about the citizenry. For instance, that a majority of citizens cannot--are truly unable to--see what's best for the country (which, if one is Republican, one must believe about Republicanism). Or, as another possibility--closely aligned with the first--that a minority of citizens have the de facto right or privilege to determine governance (because they're Republican). And thus, in either case, the proper thing to do is to limit the right (to vote) of a significant portion of the population.

What an odd thing, to believe that in order to best safeguard the country founded upon basic freedoms like voting is to limit voting.

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Two.

In another interview during the same show, Shelley Moore Capito (Republican Senator from West Virginia) declared that it would be important for a Democratic president and Democratic House to have a Republican Senate as a "firewall"--because government needs "checks and balances."

Color me naive, but I learned (in middle school) that in American governance the phrase "checks and balances" refers to the checking and balancing functions of the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judiciary. Regardless of the party composition of each, their task is to test each other's work against the Constitution. Internally, their tasks are done as a whole: the legislature makes laws, the president executes administrative tasks, and the judiciary judges. Together. But Capito's statement reveals something radically different.

Rather than working together to devise laws that will serve the majority or totality of the American people, the legislature's task, according to Capito's "checks and balances," is to serve as an arena in which Democrats check Republicans, and vice versa. By logical extension, the task of an individual Supreme Court justice is not to collaborate with her fellows to produce a unified decision for a case, but to "check and balance" the opinions of the other justices who have different political leanings.

Take it one step further, and we might say that these neologized "checks and balances" indicate that we don't elect representatives, senators, and presidents to represent our communities at the federal level; instead we send them up to oppose the other party. So instead of governance by reason, cooperation, and compromise we get governance by opposition, conflict, and martyrdom (or filibuster).

Should we change our middle school curricula to redefine "checks and balances"? Shall we teach our children that the opposing party is our enemy? Or do we have another way?

~ emrys