Democracy as Popular Responsibility

For the past couple of weeks I've been watching this show Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It's a curious entity: a Japanese anime from 1988 that, in a whole host of ways, has a shockingly progressive ethos. And it also manages something that I've almost never encountered: meaningful, interesting exploration of political philosophy through fictional narrative. I'm not sure why exactly that's so rare. Perhaps it's because democracies are boring, for narrative fiction purposes anyway. Stories demand characters but democracies are fundamentally not about any one person. Political stories set in democracies, therefore, will often over-emphasize the importance of individual figures, which is fine if they're just stories but problematic if they try to get philosophical. (I believe that's in part the story of The West Wing.) Most fantasy worlds, meanwhile, are pre-democratic, essentially feudal/monarchical societies, which are much better for storytelling but also boring for political theory purposes because, well, non-democratic political theory is wrong per se and therefore not very interesting.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes solves this dilemma I think in part by structuring itself as a conflict between the Empire, a Germanic society ruled by an autocratic Kaiser and an oppressive, entrenched nobility, and the Free Planets Alliance, a democratic society that broke away from the Empire some few hundred years ago. So far this sounds like a pretty standard Cold War-style Good vs. Evil story. The thing is, though, that the Alliance is actually a deeply diseased "democracy," probably as a result of 150 years of perpetual war. The show does a deft job of depicting a society that is simply not free despite its formally democratic institutions. The Empire, meanwhile, is equally decrepit after five hundred years of comfortable privilege for its aristocrats, but has the good fortune to be conquered by Reinhard von Lohengramm, one of the protagonists of the show, who rises up from the minor nobility to become Kaiser and begin his own, new dynasty. Though no democrat, Reinhard is very much a progressive reformer.

And what this dynamic sets up is the very interesting question of which side of this war between a corrupted democracy and an enlightened dictatorship is actually the good side. It's a particularly pressing question for the other chief protagonist, Yang Wenli, an admiral in the Alliance fleet who actually hates war and really just wants to be a history scholar, who feels uncomfortable about fighting on behalf of the in many ways unworthy Alliance government. And for whatever reason (credit presumably goes in large part to the writers of the show), Yang is spectacularly wise, and every single thing he says about political philosophy, every decision that he makes as the war goes along, is fascinating. It really gets at the ideas of, what is democracy, why is it good and important, etc., in a very deep way that you just don't see in a lot of fiction.

A Modest Defense of Democratic Filibuster Hypocrisy

In 2005, Democrats filibustered a few George W. Bush judicial nominees, who they thought were particularly radical. For a while, at least. Then Majority Leader Bill Frist (yeah, remember that guy?) threatened to use the "nuclear option" to change the rules of the Senate while it was in session.* Democrats backed down. A bunch of moderate Senators crafted a deal in which Republicans agreed not to destroy the filibuster and Democrats agreed to stop filibustering. The nominees got confirmed, and hey, guess what? They're particularly radical. During the whole controversy, of course, lots of Democrats said a lot of stuff about how great the filibuster is, and lots of Republicans said lots of stuff about how terrible it is.

On November 21st, 2013, one day before the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and two days before the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the Democratic Senate majority used the "nuclear option" to prevent the minority from obstructing executive nominees or judicial nominees other than to the Supreme Court. This isn't the first time we've had tons of Democrats now saying stuff about how horrible the filibuster is and Republicans writing paeans to it, in a bit of entertaining "everyone's a hypocrite!" theater. There's these two pieces, for example, by Slate's Emma Roller, showing the flip-flops of both President Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Mostly I think it's true that everyone's a hypocrite on this, or more specifically that this is a prime example of my long-time theory that no one has any actual beliefs about procedure except as they relate to substance. Republicans, for instance, tend to favor a small federal government because most of what the feds do these days is somewhat progressive economic stuff, regulation and redistribution and all that, but when the feds are criminalizing marijuana, suddenly Democrats love federalism. Except, and I know this is easy to mock coming from a hard-core Democratic partisan, I honestly think the combination of the two Democratic positions, from 2005 and 2013, is a lot more defensible than the combination of the Republican positions, for mostly kind of happenstance reasons.

Yes, Democrats Will Be In The Minority Some Day, That's Exactly Why Filibuster Reform *Now* Is So Brilliant

It finally happened. They reformed the filibuster in a big way. Now it only takes 51 votes to invoke cloture on an executive branch nominee or a nominee to a lower federal court (i.e., not the Supreme Court). This resembles yesterday's trade of Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler in that it looks to be just the first move of the coming constitutional crisis, or really what I anticipate will be more like constitutional spring cleaning, sweeping out the various cobwebs that are making our government harder to run than it needs to be under the Constitution. Republicans are, predictably, upset, and they're trotting out some masterfully dumb concern trolling. No, I don't mean the thing where they say Democrats have made it impossible to get anything done, because now--unlike before!--the Republicans are angry. That's not exactly concern trolling, it's more like a kind of an attempt to justify their forthcoming chutzpah. "It's your fault that I'm going to stop anything from getting done!" What I'm talking about is the claim that Democrats will live to regret this because one day they'll be in the minority, and they're not gonna like what Republicans do with the power Democrats have just given the Senate minority. Like this tweet from some Republican spokesperson:

Sen. McConnell spokesman: "I'm looking forward to President Rubio stacking the courts."
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) November 21, 2013

The thing is, though, this oh-so-charitable attempt by Republicans to show the Democrats that this rule change won't always be to our benefit only serves to highlight the critical importance of acting now. Because, you see, while it is probably true that at some point in the future, possibly multiple decades from now or maybe sooner, Republicans will control both the Senate and the Presidency, that day will look very different from this day in one key respect: there won't be a judicial vacancy crisis anymore. There probably won't be, anyway. You see, there are 93 vacancies on the federal bench right now, including 18 open seats on various Courts of Appeals. Since cloture still seems to give the minority the power to waste a day or so of Senate time, this would take a while, but in principle Obama now gets to appoint 93 new federal judges. That's well over one tenth of the federal bench. That's a huge windfall of potential new liberal judges, that Republicans won't be able to get rid of even if they take over in 2016. And once that windfall gets soaked up by somebody, since there's no judicial filibuster any more we'll probably start seeing vacancies get filled pretty much as they occur. This is, in other words, a one-time windfall. If Democrats take advantage of this opportunity, there's every reason to think Republicans will never get a similar one.

Now, that would be enough incentive if it were plausible that filibuster reform might never happen, that the Senate might just keep humming along letting the minority block nominees it didn't like. But that's not plausible. Over the past decade, Democrats and then especially Republicans realized that it's just plain irrational to keep letting the other side put its people on the bench if you have the power to stop them. But every time the minority commits to a stronger form of obstructionism, they only increase the majority's incentive to remove their ability to obstruct. That makes it inevitable, I think, that these rules will get changed, over a long enough time horizon. It's simply too hard these days for the minority to forgo use of a tool they've been legitimately given. So both parties can know that, if they aren't the ones to break the "In Case of Emergencies" glass box, that means it will be the other side. And that means they both know that not only does taking advantage of the judicial vacancy windfall mean the other side won't get to do so, not taking advantage of it pretty much guarantees that the other side will. Or, to put it another way: support some right-wing Republican is elected in 2016 and the Republicans take the Senate, even by a single vote. Who really thinks they wouldn't enact some kind of filibuster reform their very first day in office at least as drastic as what happened today? Of course they would; they know better than anyone how powerful a weapon the filibuster can be, and there's no way they'd let that weapon fall into Harry Reid's hands if they saw a chance to reshape the federal courts for a generation. So making this rules change now is in fact the only way to stop President Rubio from stacking the courts.

Except, y'know, winning Presidential elections for the foreseeable future. But we're working on that, too.

Debt Ceiling Cop-Out

Mitch McConnell had a plan to punt on the debt ceiling. Basically, Congress would cede its authority to raise the debt ceiling to the Executive Branch for the remainder of Obama's term in office, retaining only the right to block such an increase by an affirmative two-third supermajority vote which, obviously, would never happen. Three main thoughts about that:

1. Yippee! Substantively, it would be amazing if they would just agree to raise the debt limit, or even better, scrap the concept for the time being, and just let this whole effing debt negotiation stop.
2. Once upon a time, a wise Congress ditched the debt ceiling altogether, just authorizing an unlimited amount of debt in perpetuity. Unfortunately a foolish Congress later re-instated the limit, but there's no reason why this Congress couldn't destroy the limit as well.
3. The specific mechanics of this plan strike me as really weird. It's phrased as "giving the executive the power to raise the debt limit," but since the debt limit is really just the maximum amount of debt that Congress has authorized (as it must do under the Constitution), that's a strange way to put it. Ultimately what's going on here is that Congress authorizes the executive to issue an unlimited amount of debt, and claims to restrict itself from revoking that authorization for a few years except by a two-thirds vote. That last bit is clearly impossible, or it would be if the maxim that a legislature cannot bind its future self still held true. The specific device of an executive request followed by a potential Congressional veto is also, I think, the kind of thing the Supreme Court has frowned upon.

But first and foremost, this does seem to suggest that McConnell's corporate overlords really, really want this limit raised. Maybe the wealthy/business community would like a "deficit reduction" deal best of all, but if the deal looks impossible then they clearly prefer not tanking the world economy. One almost wonders, in fact, if Obama knows that, and is trying to make his final offer that Republicans end up rejecting, and then settling for a clean debt increase in lieu of, as "reasonable" (which is to say right-wing) as possible, so that he ends up looking that much better. That's the optimistic interpretation, anyway.

UPDATE: Apparently the plan is even crazier than I thought. I think I take back the "Yippee!" part, though I still hope they end up raising the limit and/or scraping it somehow without making any big ol' spending cuts.

Bad Faith, Free Trade Style

The economic argument for free trade involves making a bunch of supply-demand diagrams and noticing that, if you expand trade to include the entire world, it can't help but increase overall surplus. That is, if the country becomes an exporter and the price of the good in that country increases, the gains for producers will outweigh the losses for consumers, and if the country becomes an importer and the price of the good drops, the gains for consumers will outweigh the damage to producers. This means that, in theory, one could then re-allocate some portion of the gains that the winners from trade accrue to the losers, allowing everyone to come out ahead as a net matter. If you do it right, free trade can be pareto efficient.

Mitch McConnell, a "supporter" of free trade, is planning to vote against various free-trade agreements the Administration wants if they don't drop their insistence on including Trade Adjustment Assistance in the pacts. TAA is a program aimed at helping workers displaced by the effects of free trade find new jobs. It constitutes, in other words, the exact kind of redistributive scheme that the standard economics argument in favor of free trade calls for to make everyone better off. And McConnell opposes it. This is a tell; he's tipping his hand that he doesn't really care about free trade. He doesn't want a Pareto improvement in the well-being of Americans; he wants a really, really big improvement in the well-being of large American companies that stand to profit from free trade done badly. This is the kind of thing to look for from a politician, because when they take a stance like this it means they are not playing the game in good faith.