The Constitution and American Political Debate

Although I mostly teach graduate students, I teach one course a year in the liberal arts college of the New School, Eugene Lang College.  In my course this year, we have been closely reading Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, freely discussing his topic, the American democratic experience.  My goal for the class is to go back and forth, between close reading and informed discussion.

Of the two volumes in Tocqueville’s classic, I enjoy most reading and discussing Volume 2, which is more a critical examination of the promise and perils of democracy and its culture, less about the institutional arrangements and inventive practices of the Americans, which Tocqueville celebrated and which is the focus of Volume 1 of his masterpiece.  But this year, Volume 1 has become especially interesting to me.  I hope for the students also.

I have taught the course many times.  The way it develops always depends upon what’s going on in the world, who is in the class, and how they connect their lives with the challenges of Tocqueville.  We don’t read Tocqueville for his insights and predictions about the details of American life, judging what he got right, what he got wrong.  Rather, we try to figure out how his approach to the problems of democracy can help us critically understand our world and his, democracy in America back then and now.

Assigning the Constitution

This semester, indeed, for the past two weeks, the course has taken an interesting turn.  As we have been reading Tocqueville on the American system of government, political associations and freedom of the press, i.e. Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2, I felt the need to assign an additional shorter reading, The Constitution of the United States of America.  I did this not because I feared that the students hadn’t yet read this central document in the story of democracy in America and beyond (they had), but because I judged that it was time to re-read the text, to note what is in it and what is not, to critically appraise the use of the document as a confirmation of the partisan passions of today, and also to appraise what Tocqueville had to say about American political parties of his day and how his observations apply to our circumstances.

A few days after assigning the reading, Ron Chernow’s op-ed piece in The New York Times underscored my motivation for the assignment.  The Constitution is a complex political document, the product of serious political confrontations and compromise.  “The truth is that the disputatious founders — who were revolutionaries, not choir boys — seldom agreed about anything… Far from being a soft-spoken epoch of genteel sages, the founding period was noisy and clamorous, rife with vitriolic polemics and partisan backbiting. Instead of bequeathing to posterity a set of universally shared opinions, engraved in marble, the founders shaped a series of fiercely fought debates that reverberate down to the present day…Those lofty figures, along with the seminal document they brought forth, form a sacred part of our common heritage as Americans. They should be used for the richness and diversity of their arguments, not tampered with for partisan purposes.”

Thinking about Political Parties

Because the Constitution was a rich political document in its time, it does not decide the major political confrontations of our day.  Rather, it fuels them, as it did in the first years of the Republic in the tension between the primary advocate of an activist government then, Alexander Hamilton and along with him George Washington, and their primary opponent, Thomas Jefferson and later Andrew Jackson.  The competing readings of The Constitution served as the basis of the American party system (much to the regret of the Founders, opposed as they were to factions).

As my class and I moved on in our discussion of Volume 1, we considered the nature of the American party system.  Was it primarily about petty politics, as Tocqueville thought, in contrast to the big issues of European parties?  Or are there fundamental principles embedded within American partisan contests?  Obviously this is a matter of judgment of the observer. Tocqueville thought that Americans agreed on fundamental principles and argued only about details, that the days of great politics in America were over.  While my students generally agree with him, I don’t.

Considering the Constitution carefully and identifying what it has opened up, it is clear to me that major debates have raged about it since.  The relationship between the government and economic life is not settled by the document but raised.  The role of federal and local authorities is not decided, nor at first was the question of the relationship between freedom and slavery.  Such issues have led to competing legal opinions and decisions, but it seems to me, even more significantly, it has led to big politics, including civil war, major social movements and fundamental changes in the relationship between culture and power, in political culture.  Such issues have animated the actions of political parties in America, including right now.

It may seem that politicians are in it for themselves and that advancement in life is based upon not what you know, but who you know.  It may seem that American political practices are petty and cynical. Indeed, they are.  Tocqueville thought that major issues of governing fundamentals were settled in America and therefore it was the conflict of narrow political interest that would be the basis of American political conflict.  Some would advocate a more active role for government because it was in their immediate interests and others would advocate for minimal government, also based on interest.

But then as now there are those who see the political contest as a matter of fundamental principles, and they debate it accordingly.  There are those, such as Barack Obama and before him Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, indeed all the Democratic Presidents since FDR, who as a matter of principle see the democratic government’s positive role in the pursuit of the common good, and there are those who think the common good is best achieved by the invisible hand of the market.  This was the position of Reagan and his revolutionaries, and with post Reagan Republicans, at least in their rhetoric.

And now it is the position of The Tea Party, but they are on steroids.  The present day Tea Party Patriots seem to forget that there is an important distinction to be made between protesting the actions of a tyrannical government, and protesting and criticizing a democratic elected government that follows all the rules and procedures of the Constitution which they purport to revere.  There are competing principles and judgments, and not just competing interests.

What worries me most about the Tea Party and the Republicans and Independents that support it, aside from the craziness, is that they pretend that the debate was settled two centuries ago, in favor of minimal government and the invisible hand.  What worries me about my students’ appraisal of American politics, which I think they share not only with Tocqueville, but with the majority of their fellow citizens, young and old, is that they don’t appreciate what is at stake in the big political debate.