Time to Be Progressive

It's possible to understand both of our two major political parties as having led America into a crisis. The Republican Party – in control of the US federal government and many states and in the hands of ideological and religious extremists – has been captured by an immoral egotist with no capacity for governing. In pursuit of elite interests and “conservative values,” Republicans have launched an assault on everything good in how our government has come to serve the common welfare since the days of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt.

Democrats have not been on the playing field. They threw away the 2016 election by passing the presidential nomination through a politically correct form of primogeniture. The candidate threw it away through own goals and writing off voters in certain groups and states. Lacking any coherent vision to address the economic and social effects of globalization, the Democratic Party instead played to niche politics and appears to have little to offer beyond waiting for Trump to crash and the Republicans to burn.

Joe Biden does have a heart and could oversee cleaning up the mess the Republicans leave behind. But there must be a cohesive progressive agenda to go beyond that. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren understood that presenting voters with one could begin the process of putting the country on the right path again. A progressive agenda must begin with embracing the progressive income tax. Government needs money to serve the common good. Our tax system must be made more fair and taxes sufficient to meet our needs. (The Republicans have sought to subordinate this to cutting spending and a regressive taxing system favoring the owners of capital.) It need not be confiscatory but should treat the fruits of labor and capital equally with progressively higher tax rates on individual and corporate income no matter where it comes from and with very limited exemptions.

With adequate funding, the federal government can attend to the chief challenges facing American society in the 21st Century: healthcare, jobs, inequality and education.

Healthcare should be treated as a basic right as it is in other advanced Western societies. It need not be done through a government entity but perhaps with needs-based expansion of Medicare, a non-profit public option and/or payments to purchase insurance on open markets.

In the 21st Century, technology and globalization have conspired to reduce the need for human labor. There simply may not be enough good paying jobs for everyone. A reduction in the work week from 40 to 32 hours plus an increase in the minimum wage may help in opening job opportunities to a greater number. Federal funding to pay for some of the increase in the minimum wage could help reduce the burden on small businesses. Insofar as training will help prepare workers for new roles, government needs to fund that as well.

Inequality undercuts democratic community through making life for many nasty, brutish and short. The federal government should ensure some minimum income for those unable to work and those for whom jobs do not pay enough to rise decently above poverty.

Federal funds should support quality, free public education by focusing on providing modern facilities and adequately paid teachers and staff for all local public school systems. Federal oversight of local schools should be kept to the minimum required to ensure equal access.

Some elements of a progressive agenda need not require additional funding:

Money’s role in politics needs to be removed through campaign financing reform. A national commission on redistricting should oversee the drawing of congressional districts. Each vote should count equally.

A pathway to citizenship should be created for those now in the US “illegally.” A cross border agreement should be made with Mexico (and possibly with the Central American countries) so seasonal workers may go back and forth legally.

The role of contractors and lobbyists in the budgeting process – especially as concerns the military – should be subject to tight limitations.

The Democratic Party needs to begin talking to this agenda in the next three months and not only focusing on Trump’s disqualifications. Waiting for the Republicans to march lemming-like over their cliff might still not be enough and would nevertheless leave the country without a clear direction forward. Biden appears to be getting this.

Globalization and Its Discontents

Globalization and Its Discontents

Just about a year ago, I wrote in this space about premature globalization, suggesting that it may have come too early in humanity's history and gone too far. Whatever the putative benefits of globalization, they appear to not be shared equally but have left many – the unprotected – behind. Well before the November election, it was already clear that Donald Trump was riding the wave of discontent with globalization and would be seen as the transformation candidate.

A fierce critic of globalization now sits in the White House right behind the new President, Steve Bannon. As David Ignatius notes, however, it would be incomplete, maybe even inaccurate, to see Bannon as simply an extreme nationalist. Rather, fusing criticisms from the left and right, Bannon sees globalization as benefiting “crony capitalists” and as a threat to working Americans. Under his guidance, Trump now seems to be undoing the global order of interconnectedness that has seemed increasingly unstoppable over the past few decades. Leaving the politics of this aside, this raises two questions: Whether globalization is indeed an evolutionary inevitability or something still subject to conscious intervention by we human beings? And, if it turns out to be an inevitability, what happens if Trump and Bannon succeed in taking the United States out of contention to continue to occupy the central role in the evolving global reality?

It may well be that the dynamics behind globalization are unstoppable. Human society has moved forward over the last 100 thousand years from small isolated groups to ever larger units that now exist as interconnected nations and organized states. Since the Industrial Revolution, the economic drivers have become mass production for consumption requiring ever-broadening networks of trade for resources and customers. Efficiencies have been gained not only through advances in technology but also through the ever more comprehensive and inclusive concentrations of wealth, organization, production, distribution and trade made possible by those advances. Even when networks extended into new areas far away, they utilized the technological and “free-trade” aspects of globalization to make distributed production more efficient than previous nationally based activities. Left to itself, globalization does not produce greater equality but it does seem to create greater wealth. Since Marx at least, it has been possible to see this ever increasing accumulation of wealth as an objectification of our existence as a species. Who can stop this? Is any effort simply doomed to fighting the logos of human history?

If globalization is inevitable, would Trump and Bannon’s effort to resist it simply take the US out of the center and leave it to some others to occupy? As it now stands, the US has in the last several decades invested mightily – in money and blood – in shaping the world as much as possible in its own image. If we close our borders, emphasize national productions over free trade, reduce our role in international affairs, do we leave it to China or Russia or even a compelled reinvigorated Europe? And if globalization is inevitable, what kind of future would that make for whatever the US becomes behind its walls?

These are questions and not answers. But it seems to me too early to simply surrender to globalization as inevitable. Logically, at least, it would seem possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. We could seek to address inequality. Perhaps some limits and standards for free trade have a role in this. It makes sense to seek to protect ourselves from sources of instability and insecurity around the world but through working multilaterally within the international system rather than unilateral armed interventions. Walls and fences may have a role too, but with careful attention more on how we let people in rather than keep them out. This may be were politics becomes most relevant.

The 2016 Election

It's over and that is good.  The choice was not the best and either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders might have done better than Hillary.  She carried self-inflicted wounds and the weight of being the first serious woman candidate in a country where lots of white men are still challenged by that.  (Now watch for Elizabeth.)

However, it is also clear that yesterday the global reaction against globalization – which has benefited the rich more than the bottom – came to the US with the election of Trump as President.  Not just white men felt left behind by what seems an elite project to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest.  But if the Republican conservative fundamentalists fill Trump's Administration and have their way, our country and the world will continue coming apart and there will be many losers.  Watch for encouragement of foreign extremists (and Putin) as well as chaos in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan if the US hand is removed or rejected.  Watch for Republicans ruining the economy again with more trickle-down.  Watch for those people feeling empowered now to do nasty things to others not like them (including some who may get cabinet jobs.)  Things all around could get dangerous.  But being an optimist, one can hope that Trump will surprise in some good ways.  Perhaps centrist Congressional Republicans, Democrats in the Senate and the former Democrat version of Trump (he was one a few years back) will save us from the excesses of the campaign Trump.  Trump's victory comments were at least more presidential.  

Boy, do we ever need Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What Hillary Needs to Do to Win in November

Donald Trump has been winning votes in places and with constituencies that the Democrats usually win in presidential races. Bernie Sanders has been winning votes that in the past went to Hillary. Both men have understood the dynamics of a political landscape transformed by the rise of the unprotected. Both understand that the great majority of non-elite Americans – those outside the 1% – live with varying degrees and kinds of fear. They have seen administration after administration, whichever party, remain complacent with erosion of America's place in the world, increasing inequality, loss of jobs and decay of basic infrastructure. Prospects for a better future – if not for themselves, for their children – seem to have gone up in smoke. Hillary Clinton has her core constituency of minorities but her ability to gather in those who have been voting for Trump and Sanders – working/middle class whites and the young – is very much open to question.

In part, Trump has prospered on the Republican side because of the ideological rigidity and uninspiring nature of his opponents. Clinton has been able to keep the lead on the Democratic side because of her establishment support and core constituencies. Whether the Republican establishment likes it or not, Trump has seized their party. The Democrats appear stuck with Hillary. Sanders may well have a better chance of beating Trump by keeping the traditional Democratic base while adding the young and inspired. Perhaps the party will yet grab hold of itself – what if Sanders won California? – and switch the super-delegates to Bernie. But otherwise, it will have to go into the November race with an uncharismatic, widely disliked, upholder of the establishment.

How might Hillary nevertheless win? She would have to meet Trump issue by issue with specific, focused plans to actually deal with the challenges that he only promises to overcome by merely being Trump.

Top of the list are jobs and free trade. Both parties' long adherence to the free-trade religion has clearly led to the shifting of American jobs abroad. The supposed benefits have included a plethora of imported “cheaper” goods that the working/middle class must struggle to buy with the wages of the lower paying service jobs left them. Clinton might instead call for a moratorium on free-trade agreements – including the TPP – and a re-evaluation of all existing such agreements (except for NAFTA which remains a vital part of our own neighborhood). Trade agreements that benefit far-off workers in repressive regimes – and thus help keep such regimes in power – should be special targets for possibly rolling back. Re-visiting free-trade would be accompanied by a re-industrialization program to support the creation of jobs in the productive sectors that could be competitive provided with limited government support and perhaps protective tariffs. Free-traders would offer many objections but the country at large is living with the reality that free-trade globalization may have been premature.

Clinton might also go beyond platitudes about re-building America by offering a detailed outline of infrastructure spending. Our drinking-water systems, city streets and mass transport systems, inter-city rails, highways, bridges, tunnels and waterways all need repair or replacement. Areas prone to sea-level and climate change need to be identified and communities, places and activities perhaps re-configured or relocated. Everywhere-wireless internet access might be built. All these would create good jobs and add value to our economy.

Clinton might outline detailed plans to curtail the ability of “Wall Street” – too-big-to-fail financial activities and entities – to cause or heighten economic recessions. She might also commit to seeking legislation (and Supreme Court nominees) that will reduce the role of money in our elections and enable universal voter participation. She might also decide to fund her campaign only from direct fundraising from individual small donors.

Finally, Clinton might take on directly the longstanding Republican attack on government. Government is our collective capability to act on our collective behalf. It is not the “enemy.” She should definitively eschew the sort of “triangulation” that looks to “compromise” with every 1% -inspired effort to cut government spending and target entitlements. This also means taking on the debt-issue. The US prints the world's money and there is no competitor yet on the scene.  Taxes on the well-off could be raised considerably without scaring them away. (The US is still the best place on earth to enjoy your money.) Clinton might also combine a continued commitment to a strong US defense with a commitment to look again at our need for such things as $13 billion aircraft carriers and expensive equipment and weapons that are seldom used or don't work or cost as promised.

In the general election, Trump will be the transformation candidate in the narrowest sense of trying to convince American voters that he himself is all the transformation they need. If she gets the nomination, Hillary Clinton may have to become the candidate of real, detailed plans for transformation in order to win in November. 

The rise of the unprotected

In Europe breaking (on TransConflict), I suggest that the renewed flood of refugees this year will tear up the reality of a border-less EU while raising a popular political backlash from the populist left and right.  As noted there, Peggy Noonan in a recent WSJ piece makes an interesting distinction between the "protected" and the "unprotected."  Taking her concept perhaps a little further than she does, the protected make public policy (and/or influence how it is made through money) while the unprotected are those who have to live in it (with no real influence over how its made). The protected make the decisions (directly or indirectly), living the good life secure in their own communities. Because they are mostly insulated from any negative effects of their policies, they feel they can impose anything on the rest. The unprotected live with none of these advantages. Noonan credits the rise of Trump in the US with his understanding that the unprotected have given up hope on the usual politics and politicians.  But this also explains the rise of populist parties in Europe where the unprotected live with insecurity and enforced austerity.

Here in the US, the protected are oddly enough taking on one of their own, Donald Trump.  He has cleverly rode -- enabled even -- a wave of angst from the unprotected to the lead in the Republican Party race for its presidential nomination.  The party grandees (and their moneyed supporters) are now taking unprecedented measures to try and cut him down.  They claim he is not a true conservative.  By this they mean he does not follow the mantra of any government is bad government, any taxes are bad taxes and any social welfare program is bad social welfare.  The "true conservatives" -- funded by the very rich contributing hundreds of millions of dollars -- don't need government.  They simply want to control it and use it for their own ends, including cutting tax rates on them and ensuring little money is "wasted" on the unprotected.  These folks don't like Trump.  He does not seem to share their reluctance to use government for certain ends.  While he wants to abolish "Obamacare" he also says he will "broaden healthcare access, make healthcare more affordable and improve the quality of the care available to all Americans."  On taxes, he would abolish most tax exemptions and "loopholes" for the rich and for corporations.  This almost sounds socialist.

Given Trump's anti-immigrant position and over-the-top rhetoric, he is not everyone's cup of tea.  But he has tapped into the same popular sense of having been left out that Bernie Sanders has. This all suggests a wave of revulsion against the rule of the protected that may sweep over the November elections and change the landscape or simply run aground against the rocks.  The protected will pull out everything they have to stop Trump.  Sanders they will leave to Hillary while burnishing their Bengazi/email knives for her.

Mistakes Were Made II

The US is now in the process of choosing its next president. Everyone – in America and beyond – should insist that all the candidates clearly define their notion of national interest and explain how it addresses limitations as well as possibilities. Then the American people must choose very wisely. The 21st Century appears to be just beginning a wild ride.


Full piece in TransConflict.

The Republican Conundrum

A good friend of mine, a Republican former Hill staffer and Bush Administration (W) official, tells me that as of this week he cast his support to Kasich. As he sees it, Trump and Cruz would spell disaster for the party. He believes that while Trump and Cruz together get around 50% of the Republican vote, they can't make much headway into the other half. He would even vote for Bernie rather than them and believes many other Republicans would too. He discounts Bush – whom he believes would have been a better president than his brother – because of dynasty fatigue and distrust from the Bush presidents not keeping their word (on taxes and war). Rubio might be able to recover but Kasich has more experience.

My friend also also believes Bernie may prevail over Hillary because of her negatives. He thinks Sanders would win over either Trump or Cruz but not with enough votes to bring in a Democratic majority in either house. (He would find a divided government, and continued political stalemate, an acceptable outcome.)

This is the Republican conundrum. A significant part of the Republican electorate is deeply distressed about the prospect of either Trump or Cruz winning the nomination. But they don't yet see a clear path for anyone who may be able to stop them. The possibility that the peculiar political circumstances of this year – an electorate wanting something new and aligned along the “extreme” wings of the two parties – could lead to a Trump vs Sanders match-up is startling. But the Fat Lady hasn't sung yet and things may sort out a bit come South Carolina. However, if Trump wins there and the non-Trump/Cruz candidates bunch up without any clear breakout, the Republican Party will be in difficult straits.

Bernie Concedes While it'll be Trump vs Cruz and Bush throwing a "Hail Mary"

Some commentators noted Bernie Sanders' victory speech on Tuesday night, after winning the New Hampshire primary, was a bit too long. This may have been because Senator Sanders gave two different speeches in one. Right off he complimented Hillary Clinton. He then noted that in a few months, the Democrats would have to come together. He then explained that the competition between the two Democratic candidates was injecting energy into the party and bringing the young people in. It would need both to win in November. In the middle of his speech, he again complimented Clinton and at the end he made clear that the purpose of it all was to prevent any of the Republicans from winning the presidency. Seems to me that this part of his speech was in effect a concession that he didn't really count on winning the nomination but that his raising issues that brought in the young people, targeted the 1% and Wall Street and pushed the party to embrace its progressive past would make Hillary a better candidate and the help the Democrats win in November.

Now Bernie could not say any of this outright. He needs to go on to continue the contest in upcoming primaries and continue to “energize” the Democratic base. You don't do that by making it clear you really don't expect to win and are running just to help the cause. So the second part of the speech was more of the standard “when I'm president” type. Along the way, he kept the focus on inequality but also addressed international affairs and race, gender and gay issues.

Bernie may have suspected that this win in New Hampshire might be his one really big chance to address the country. He used it, including a pitch in the middle for donations. Bernie hit all his notes and expanded his message. But his chief objective seemed to be a message to Hillary, take this medicine, it will be good for you, the party and the nation.

On the Republican side, the big news was the expected – but necessary to renew his self-declared “winner” image – big win by Donald Trump and the second place by heretofore quasi-unknown Ohio Governor John Kasich. But the real story is the cards falling today, the day after with Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina both dropping out. This leaves Cruz, Jeb Bush and maybe RoboRubio to contend for the job of knocking down Trump. Kasich spent a lot of time in New Hampshire and probably can't replicate his success in the southern primaries coming up. Bush has tons of money and may be able to keep in the race long enough to become, by default, the only “moderate” establishment Republican left standing. In the upcoming South Carolina primary, it will in effect be Trump vs Cruz while Bush tries to pull away from the rest of the pack.

Time for the US to take the bull by the hand in Kosovo

Today I posted on TransConflict a piece on the detention of Kosovo Serb political activist Oliver Ivanovic.  I know and respect Oliver through the three 1/2 years I served with the UN in north Kosovo.  It appears that the European Union prosecuted him with the agreement -- if not encouragement -- of the Serbian government in Belgrade.  Seems no one wants a strong, independent leader for the Kosovo Serbs no matter how moderate and pragmatic he may be.  Or maybe I might say, almost no one.  The United States, long the motive force behind carving out of Serbia a majority Albanian state, might see the utility in helping the Serb community in the country become a positive element in a truly democratic, multi-ethnic state. 

For a long time, I was critical of the unilateral move to Kosovo independence outside the ambit of the UN Security Council resolution (1244) which entered into force after the NATO bombing of Milosevic' Serbia.  But the fact is there is nothing wrong with Kosovo independence and given the treatment of Kosovo Albanians by Milosevic, it certainly is understandable why they would not want to risk that again.  Perhaps more to the point, there is nothing about current day Serbia that suggests it would be better for Kosovo to have remained part of it.  Both Kosovo and Serbia have problems -- corruption, low growth, tardy economic reform and dysfunctional politics.  Nothing could possibly be gained by bringing the two together in one failed state.   Indeed, much would be gained for both if Serbia recognized Kosovo independence.  Serbia could move ahead on EU membership before the door is nailed shut and Kosova could start to face its real problems.

The US had hoped that the Europeans would handle Kosovo, move it steadily to something the internationals could declare a success and leave behind.  That hasn't happened.  The US Embassy in Pristina must still play an out-sized role in keeping the lid on political conflict among the Albanians and the US still has troops in Kosovo.  Bringing a unified, pragmatic Serb community into the mix would not change things fundamentally in Kosovo.  But it could be an important step in bringing some light into a smoke-filled room.

The US should do whatever is necessary to end the political persecution of Oliver Ivanovic.  And along the way, end its affair with Hashim Thaci and bow to reality by finding a way to bring Ramush Haradinaj into the mix.  The future of Kosovo should not be left in the hands of EU mandarins or ghosts of the past.

The US and Russia

In 1991, the USSR dissolved into a collection of independent states leaving the Russian Federation as its internationally recognized successor. (As the legal successor state, Russia inherited the Soviet Union's seat on the UN Security Council.) The states of the former Eastern Bloc had already broken free of Soviet control. German unification was a fact. It might have seemed that the Cold War was over with NATO's mission of protecting the West from Soviet aggression no longer needed. But NATO did not disappear. Instead it began moving east into the former Warsaw Pact countries. In Washington, the judgement was that the US had “won” the Cold War, the USSR had “lost” and Russia was now just a second class power of little consequence. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999. By 2004, NATO took in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania thereby moving well beyond the former boundaries of the USSR. Albania and Croatia were admitted in 2009. Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia are on on the doorstep. Reaching deeper into the former USSR, NATO unilaterally decided to eventually bring in the Ukraine and Georgia.

It demands great credulity to believe that Russia would not have seen this expansion east as a form of aggression. Russia has a long history and a deep culture. It also possess a formidable military, nuclear weapons, and that seat on the Security Council. Moscow essentially swallowed the first waves of NATO expansion but balked at Georgia (where Stalin was born) and in 2014 drew the line in Ukraine. None of this should have been surprising. That President Putin, for partly political reasons, played to Russian nationalism in his reaction to NATO's pretensions should not hide the fact that Russia and the Russian people had good reason to feel brazenly provoked.

During the Yeltsin years, the US made efforts to support Russian “reform.” But we Americans have little appreciation of the particularities of other countries – historical, social, cultural, political – and expected too much and gave too little. With Putin the trajectory has been mostly down. But the events in Ukraine, Russian resilience to sanctions, and Moscow's reclaimed role in the Mideast suggest that it was always foolish to see Russia as simply a second class power of no consequence. The US and Europe – as at least the Germans understand – need Russia.

Russia and the US have a deep shared interest in their own and global security. They form, in effect, the Western and Eastern flanks of the Atlantic community. Conflict between the two helps neither. We face a common threat from Islamic fundamentalism and the regional chaos in Syria and Iraq. We both must contend with the “rise” of China. That the two countries have different political systems is not unusual and reflects our very different histories. It should not take Donald Trump to note that the Russian people have chosen their president and still support him. Sanctions have not weakened Putin because the Russian people need little help in seeing in them another example of US aggression.

What should be done? Washington's political class should make up its collective mind to deal with the Russia that is rather then the one it might wish. NATO expansion into Ukraine is not required by US national interests and should be dropped. EU membership for Ukraine should be left to the EU to process (or not). Sanctions should be rolled back. The US played a large part in Syria and Iraq's descent into chaos. There, Washington should accept that Russia has interests and that Assad's fate needs to be negotiated. More generally, the US should commit itself to working multilaterally and with it's partners on the UN Security Council, especially Russia. Achieving compromise approaches may not be easy. Trust has frayed. But as our work together on Iran nuclear shows, things can get done. And the US needs partners that don't always simply say “yes.” Those “coalitions of the willing” are not adequate protection from making mistakes. 

Note:  An earlier version of this appeared in TransConflict.

Obama's Watershed Victory

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President Barack Hussein Obama made history for the second time on November 6, 2012. The first time, in 2008, he became the first non-white to win the American Presidency. But that was mostly due to the appalling situation that George W. Bush had created – endless war and economic catastrophe – and the eagerness of the American public to change course. This time Obama won election on his own, by putting together the first winning coalition built upon the tremendous diversity of American society. Romney won the white vote. But Obama won the vote of blacks, hispanics, women, gays and the young, and of big city/suburban dwellers and the “47%” that Romney mistakenly wrote off early in the campaign.

Clearly, many Obama supporters were also white, just not the older, rural, male and richer ones that were the core of Romney's support. Obama won the election because he gained the votes of the diverse, urban America of the 21st Century. He did so because he is clearly in tune with that diversity and because of a sophisticated (and unfortunately expensive) political machine that was able to target and enthuse the many and varied slices of our social, economic, cultural and regional complexity.

The Republican Party clearly understands none of this. Instead of seeking to embrace this emergent diversity, the Republicans made war on it by targeting the black man elected in 2008. Unspoken racial fears still present in much of that section of the white electorate that remains solidly Republican allowed the small government, no-tax-increase fundamentalists to appear to have a solid political base. The rich, white “one-per-centers” making up the Republican elite of office holders and donors sought to build upon this by frightening just enough additional voters to unseat the President they sought to demonize with charges he would make the US into “Greece.” It turned out that this was not enough to win over all those real people with real concerns and hopes not addressed in such simple terms.

The Republicans instead should have sought to seize at least some of the new ground before it became more solidified for the Democrats. In a way, they were fortunate to have finally settled on Mitt Romney – former governor of Massachusetts, a northeastern “blue” state – as their candidate. After his nomination, the ever-mutable Romney could have used his fabled “etch-a-sketch” to begin redefining his party in the more moderate direction it needs to go to remain competitive. Romney is a rich man but Americans don't automatically hold that against anyone. Rich Republicans used to remember that the economic system that made them rich and keeps them rich doesn't, by itself, ensure the fairness and equal opportunity that alone produces majority support for that system. The Republicans needed to find an updated version of someone like Nelson Rockefeller, a true moderate who could project compassion and understanding of the social compact necessary to sustain democracy and yet also be rich.

Romney could have become the new and improved Rockefeller. This would have meant resisting currents that have been building since Goldwater and that eventually undid the moderate wing of the Republican party. Difficult, but a start could have been made, especially running with the incumbent facing strong economic headwinds. Instead, Romney chose to play it safe and instead solidify his (white) base by choosing to move to the extreme right and to pick as his running mate a poster boy for Republican fundamentalism. If Romney had moved earlier and more consistently toward the center, the Republican base would have had nowhere else to go. It still really, really wanted to get rid of Obama. Other Republican leaders could have fallen in line in the interest of winning this and future elections. But none of this happened. Romney's lack of political courage and his choice to run to his “base” led to his defeat and that of the party that jumped with him into the demographic wilderness.

Shed no tears for the Republicans. They have sought since 2008 to lie, bully and scare their way back into power without offering anything beyond fears about debt and big government. Twenty-First Century America is too large, diverse and complex to be governed with a simple no-new-taxes, small government catechism.

President Obama and the Democrats don't have have all the answers either and did not offer any new, big vision in this campaign. But Obama seems to understand that while government cannot and should not try to do everything, it must be a major part of the effort to manage our complexity. Government must help keep our society within the bounds of fairness and justice by providing our free-market economy the political structure (and infrastructure) necessary to empower it to continue to fuel our American way of life for all Americans.

Our Three-headed Beast - Divided US Leadership

The New Yorker of March 19 has an interesting piece - The Unpersuaded by Ezra Klein - that looks at whether Presidential speeches make any difference.  He finds that they do, in a negative way.  When President's talk about things they support or want to do, they engender partisan resistance to that very thing among the opposition.  What helps a President achieve his agenda is a strong enough economy to help him win re-election and his party to gain enough seats to gain/maintain control of Congress.  This may always have been true but seems more so over the last few decades.

Drawing from political scientist Juan Linz, Klein writes that our form of presidential democracy is not common.  And for good reason.  "A broad tendency toward instability and partisan conflict is woven into the fabric of a political system in which a democratically elected executive can come from one party and a democratically elected legislature from another.  Both sides end up having control over some levers of power, a claim to be carrying out the will of the public, and incentives that point in opposite directions."  Parties no longer moderate this tendency in our American system because they have been transformed from "big tents" to groups operating as "disciplined, consistent units."  With party rigidity, the President becomes a polarizing figure rather than a persuader.

In other words, we have a system in which the parliamentary leaders - Speaker and Senate majority leader - and the executive can form a three-headed beast instead of a coherent government.  Time for change?  Time for a constitutional convention?

The Case for a Constitutional Convention

I wrote several days ago on the usefulness of rediscovering the Articles of Confederation. But it is clear that the crisis – economic, political and moral – facing the United States today cannot be resolved by simply returning to the past. For years now, things seem to have been getting worse. Income disparity has been increasing, wars proliferating, politicians squabbling. Government has become overbearing, inefficient and too beholding to money. The American people's growing sense that things need to be fixed has energized both the Tea Party and Occupy movement.

Change is necessary but we the people cannot trust others to do it for us. Our politicians seek nothing more than power. Once elected, they spend most of their time and energy raising money in order to get re-elected. Our leaders do not lead because taking necessary actions might lose this or that constituency. So we need to start the change ourselves.

We need to begin pushing for a Constitutional Convention to change the way our government works and to ensure it better serves the 99%. A government lean, more responsive to our needs in the 21st Century and more focused on achieving economic prosperity with justice and liberty.

The Occupy movement has been criticized for not having any overall objective. How about occupying the Constitution?

The Tea Party wants fiscal responsibility, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Let's do that the right way.

The US Constitution in Article V allows for various ways to amend the constitution:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; 

Leaving constitutional changes to the Congress would be to leave it in the hands of the professional politicians. The most reliable way to ensure real change would be to use the mechanism of a Constitutional Convention. None has been called since the first in 1787. But if the Occupy movement – perhaps alongside the Tea Party – focused now on electing in 2012 state legislatures committed to calling a Convention, a new era of American democracy could begin.

A Constitutional Convention would surely be a hotbed of democracy. Whether Occupy or Tea Party, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, everyone would come into it with different ideas. Reaching agreement on amendments to the constitution would probably be difficult and require equal measures of consensus and compromise. But such a convention would offer a real opportunity for the people to once again assume control of their government. The process of reaching agreement and then ratification by 3/4s of the states would offer further opportunities for democratic participation.

Some are no doubt afraid – whether they say so or not – of such direct democratic participation. They are comfortable with the way things are done today and do not want anyone to mess with that. But we, the great law abiding majority, the 99%, have nothing to fear from coming together to discuss and enact change.

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Concluding Reflections

Introduction    Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5

   The victory of the Founding Fathers in 1787 put the Articles of Confederation into the dustbin of American history.  But the debate between anti-federalists and federalists never entirely disappeared.  A fundamental difference in political vision has continued to run through the American political tradition like twin rivers.  The source of one river is the impulse, typical of Americans, to rise above local and individual differences to grasp the elements of a national, even global, commonality.  A rich and powerful mass democracy with universalistic pretensions has been built along this river.

   The source of the other river is the impulse, equally typical, to do it ourselves, to keep it small.  Upon this river have floated the various proposals and efforts over the years to reduce or limit the size and powers of the federal government.  Politics in America has often been the attempt to sail upon both rivers at once.  Those on opposing sides have had various labels:  Federalists and Anti-Federalists, unionists and states-righters, liberals and conservatives and now Occupy and Tea Party.

    Since the Articles were cast aside, the federalists have generally been ascendant. Those who have sought to advocate states rights or who have fought to preserve state powers against encroachment by the federal government have been handicapped.   The Articles were judged by its opponents to have failed.  Memory of the 13 years of confederal government faded.  This is not to say that the idea of state sovereignty has not returned at times to haunt American politics.  The southern Confederate States of America, in its mixture of states rights and an unholy effort to maintain slavery, was the final nail in the coffin not only of state nullification but of an historical consciousness of what was lost with the victory of the Federalists.

    What has been lost can be seen most closely in the failure of government in the current United States to serve the majority, the 99%.  One could say that this failure was inevitable in the age of nation-states, superpowers and globalization.  Governing a large modern nation in a world of fierce ideological, political and economic competition must entail enormous bureaucracies and incomprehensibly large budgets.  In our case, the attempt to guarantee the “pursuit of happiness” of all citizens - as much a necessary requirement of centralized, representative government as the gladiatorial games were for Imperial Rome - requires great effort and considerable resources and organization.  It gives great scope to the power of money.  

   Yet the voices raised against “big government” and "big business" express true insights.  The role of the average citizen in government has dwindled to the vanishing point while that of big money has come to predominate.  In the 19th and 20th centuries, Americans experienced the full range of challenges -- collective and personal -- associated with the growth of modern industrial society.  These difficulties included wars and cyclical economic downturns.  The growth of the central government in response to these challenges – especially during the Civil War and the Great Depression -- was dictated, at least in part, by practical necessity.  But the Constitution gave the government a mandate to provide for the “general welfare” and “common defense.”  It armed Congress with all “necessary and proper” power for doing so and vested in the president whatever "executive power” might be necessary.  With each major crisis, the focus shifted to what “government” could do to resolve the situation and, thus, from local efforts to the central government.  Along with the “welfare state,” the seeming imperatives of economic development made the government in Washington the ultimate provider  The Cold War, as well as the “hot” ones, levered the presidency into what can fairly be described as an imperial throne.  Meanwhile, as government receded from the people, it fell more and more into the hands of those with the cash to fund the politicians and manipulate the bureaucracy to their own ends. 

    In 1787, America reached a fork in the road.  It could have chosen to stay on the course it was marking out for the first time - confederal democracy - or it could return to the well-trodden path of centralized government.  Perhaps being “too young to know what we are fit for”, we chose the old road, and that has made all the difference.

    There are, however, two features of confederal democracy that might lead one to see in it a workable model for self-government.  First, by leaving decision making in the hands of those most directly affected, confederal democracy provides the citizens of the relevant community a public space in which to confront each other and work out jointly what is to be done.  They enjoy what Arendt called the pleasures and benefits of public life.  Tempered by the experience of mutual recognition and cooperation between citizens in the process of self-government, local government can become, as it was for the Greeks, an arena for collectively seeking the good life.  Politics in confederal democracy therefore would be vigorous and complex and would mirror the full range of interests, values and tastes in the community.

   Second, by leaving primary responsibility for living the good life where it most belongs, with those most immediately affected by the results of collective decisions, confederal democracy leaves less space for others to operate in the shadows.  Power flows not from beyond but from below.  Problems are solved at the level of government at which all affected can participate - town, county, state, regional, national - but no higher.  Citizens face each other directly in full transparency to solve their common problems and to resolve their differences.  A confederal polity requires citizen initiative.  Confederal democracy - built on active citizen participation in their polis - is the unrealized potential of the American tradition of local self-government.

    Certainly, the need to guarantee social justice and political equality amidst the strains of modern society assures that even a confederal central government would be an important political actor.  But perhaps the load might be more evenly placed, resting more directly where in a democracy it should, on the people.  However, the road chosen in 1787 followed the premise of maintaining government as far from the people as the new notions of popular sovereignty allowed.  Under the shocks of industrialization and war, Washington came to monopolize political space and government became someone else’s concern: citizens became subjects.

   The result is ironic.  The fate of over 300 million Americans - and essentially the entire globe that we have come to dominate - rests with a mere handful of people often far removed from the results of their decisions.  The Constitution that took the place of the Articles of Confederation set up a powerful central government and left we the people with no place else to turn.  But the call to resurrect the vision of that other, more democratic America still echoes.  Those who hear this call should ensure that they go back to the source to be sure they understand what they are hearing. 

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Part 5

Introduction    Part 1    Part 2     Part 3    Part 4

Confederation, Community and Bodies Politic

   The anti-federalists saw the question of power from the bottom-up.  The Constitution would establish a government with too much power, too far away from the people.  They feared the return of aristocracy.  To set up one government in place of thirteen, and to endow that government with the law, the purse and the sword, would be to destroy democracy.  No matter the supposed guarantees, the states would eventually be reduced to the administrative agents of the central government.  Without the intermediation of the states, the power of the central government could be brought to bear directly on the individual.

   The anti-federalists therefore opposed establishing a “great” power.  Instead, they favored granting power in small pieces, close to what they held to be the only reliable check, the people.  In place of one preponderant national government, they wanted to preserve the division of government among the states.  The state legislatures, more accessible to the citizenry, more closely tied to local politics, and with membership in the hundreds, could better reproduce the full variety of local interests and opinion than could a handful of representatives in a national legislature.

   Those who supported the Articles tended to see the representative in the legislature as a delegate (or ambassador) - as someone bound to vote as his constituents would if they could be there - rather than as a trustee - who would be free to vote according to his own judgement.  The delegate model could not work in a national parliament because of the great size of the country and the correspondingly greater number of people each legislator would represent.

   The national congress envisioned by the federalists would not represent the views of the citizens but pass them through a chosen few who would end up doing whatever was to their own advantage.  The anti-federalist view of representation as a simple transmission of the wishes of constituents fitted with their reliance on state and local politics, where interests are more immediate, communication more direct and government more subject to majorities.

   The Articles were based upon the assumption that people live in communities that mean something to them and reflect what they hold in common.  They supposed, in other words, that the natural community of man is not a mass of competing individuals but real local groupings based upon shared activities and characteristics.  Such groupings were not abstractions but were well within the reach of each person, where he lived his everyday life in his town, village, city and region. 

   In building a national government based upon sovereign entities within the traditional sphere of life of their people, the Articles kept government from becoming a Leviathan confronting individuals as something above and beyond them.  Real politics took place at the local level.  What mattered, happened there, where people could see it and directly participate in the decisions affecting them.  If democracy works best when people actively participate in government, then keeping government as close to them as possible to facilitate participation would assist the development of democracy.

   One may argue that confederal government is less “efficient” than unitary government.  Under even the amended Articles, if a majority of the states resisted a particular requisition or other action proposed in Congress, nothing would happen.  If a majority of states agreed and complied with a congressional decision but a minority did not, there would ultimately be nothing beyond moral suasion to enforce compliance by the holdouts.  Thus an action that many might judge rational and necessary might fail to be adopted.  It might also be that a majority (or minority, for that matter) might desire a particular course of action with considerable intensity and feel corresponding frustration on being unable to gain collective agreement or compliance. 

   But in practice, confederal government may be, in its own way, more efficient by allowing a greater range of political spaces.  Based on the premise that the expression of self-interest is unavoidable, the confederal government embodied in the amended Articles would have allowed for cooperation at various points along a continuum of mutual commitment and judgement of interest.  Finding the right node for achieving consensus takes its place along side intensity of interest in resolving political issues.  All states might agree and actively participate in joint national-level decisions.  Or, a majority of states might decide to act anyway, either through bearing the costs of collective action unequally - i.e. by themselves - or by acting as a subgroup outside the mechanism of the national congress.  A minority might well decide to do the latter as well.  Politics would no doubt be dense, as states jostled for both advantage and, at least occasionally, to avoid being left out.  But in a flexible and fluid situation where there was more than “one game in town,” things that needed to get done would mostly likely get done and lone holdouts or interstate differences would not necessarily block all further action.  

   The Constitution of 1787 sought to ensure that the body politic would speak only when a sufficient number and diversity of interests had sufficiently checked-and-balanced each other to be able to say one thing.  As we now know quite well, this leaves the Leviathan either powerless or impelled by intensely interested minorities. 

   Confederation provides for many voices to be heard on many levels.  The Continental Congress was a forum for the states but the states could act outside that forum, in groups or singly.  The Articles also left entirely unregulated the political forms that might exist within states.  A confederal united states offered the possibility of a structure of multiple bodies politic.  Government or associations could exist at each level - local, state, regional, and national - to exercise authority on specific matters delegated to it from the level below.  This meant local approaches for local issues, regional for regional and national for national.  Local government, possessing the sovereignty of immediacy, would anchor a framework of legitimacy and decision-making built from the bottom up.

   In the continental-sized federal system that grew out of the Constitution of 1787, final authority - exercised in the name of the “people” - is far away from where the people actually live.  The government in Washington has understandably come to feel alien to many, who have been reduced to being political spectators assembled once every few years to cheer from the stands.   The states remain, but as political “backwaters” bypassed by the present constitution.

   Is it not, however, inevitable that as we become ever more immersed in the emerging global context, we will require more and more that government make sense of the resulting web of complexity?  And who will trust the government to do that if it seems more a part of the external environment rather than something that belongs to us?  And as the World Wide Web and economic globalization connects us in ever more complex ways, does a sovereign “central government” per se still play a necessary role?

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Part 4

Introduction   Part 1   Part 2   Part 3


The Federal Leviathan

   In the debate over what to do to go beyond the Articles, the issue, for confederalists and federalists alike, was power.  Both shared the belief that great power, concentrated in one place, is an open invitation to abuse.  However, the Federalists did not object to centralized power.  For them, a strong central power was a necessary element in holding together and directing a continental-sized nation.  In a large, powerful and wealthy society, preponderant force must exist as the basis for rule.  The Federalists sought only to check the powers of a strong executive with a strong parliament.   They proposed, in other words, to grant this great power to the center but divide it.

   The Federalists’ fundamental charge against the Articles was that they provided for a government both too weak and inefficient and too open to local majorities and interests.   It could be argued that even the confederation of the amended Articles would continue to depend on the voluntary compliance of its member states and thus remain fatally flawed.  Without the ability to enforce compliance on the states, the central government could not perform that one function necessary in a community of individual entities each seeking advantage, to enforce cooperation and contribution to the common good.

   Throughout the brief confederal period, some states failed to fulfill commitments to the central government and there were always inter-state and inter-regional rivalries.   Clearly, without the states’contribution and active participation, the confederation could not prosper.  The Articles, even if amended, would not have done away with this problem.  Indeed, the Constitution of 1787 did not do so.  The Civil War had to be fought, hundreds of thousands of Americans had to die, and the federal government had to settle by force-of-arms the question of where ultimate authority resided before the Constitution could be “perfected.”

   Seeking the common good is a classic political conundrum that has called forth various responses.  The most obvious, and the one perhaps most used, is the Hobbesian option, constituting a “Leviathan” which can force obedience.  Although not all supporters of the Constitution of 1787 were so motivated, the option for creating a strong central authority had great appeal to many of the Federalists and their supporters, and most clearly for Hamilton.
 
   According to the Federalists, the government of the Articles did not create a national polity that could manifest the broad interests of the people.  Rather, it represented the states.  Dividing America into localities, it allowed local majorities to hold sway.  Holding power in the states, these “local interests” – or “factions” – did not seek the public good but their own.  Thus, the Federalists argued that the confederation lacked not only efficiency but also representativeness.  The new government that the Federalists proposed would merge these many local majorities together into one polity where they would have to contend with each other on equal grounds, i.e., as minorities.  Through the several institutions of government, the public view could be “refined” and a national will -- stripped of factionalism -- could emerge.  The Constitution would, in effect, arrange the political machinery so that a “nation” would form around the polity.

   The Founders as much as hoped to create “America” as to supply it with a government.  In this sense they were indeed “nation builders.”  The confederation stood in the way of this intended act of creation.  That in some cases the local majorities that governed in the states used their power against their “betters” -- such as in the chronic confrontation between debtors and creditors -- further motivated some of the Federalists to look to establish a federal government out of the reach of these local majorities.
 
   The Constitution of 1787 was a document of predominantly nationalist, not democratic, sentiment.  It took the politically necessary tact of presenting in republican form the Hamiltonian vision of an imperial America.  The Constitution stripped the states of sovereignty and established an what was in effect an “elective monarchy” with a president/commander-in-chief – chosen by a collection of local notables called the Electoral Collage – and checked by a national parliament.  In establishing a separate executive branch, the Constitution also provided the new federation with a nascent bureaucracy.  

    Because the contemporary political reality was based upon the sovereignty of the thirteen states, the Federalists did not highlight the issue of the states’ relationship to the proposed federal government.  But the anti-federalists were aware of the potential in the new document.  The Constitution sought to submerge the states within the framework of a national government that largely dispensed with them as localized aggregators of political input or prime vehicles of political output.  It established a national government with broad undefined powers and with legal precedence in those areas in which it was given authority.  It provided for taxes raised independently of the states and gave the central government a standing army and control over the state militia.

   To the confederalists, the changes proposed by the Federalists did not seem to guarantee the continuance of the political preeminence of the states.  If their fears were often exaggerated, the subsequent shift of the political center of gravity to the central government has supported their fundamental concern.  The states have not completely disappeared, in large part because of the strong American tradition of local government and a concomitant fear of big government.  But the growth in the size and importance of the federation’s central government -- and the increased power within that government of the president -- have filled in the mere outline of electoral monarchy established by the Constitution.

   It was the “genius” of the Founding Fathers to move beyond the states to structure the basic political dynamic around the contention of “faction” writ large.  Implicit was the notion that the “natural” community of man was the mass of individuals competing in the “state of nature.”  In the face of this abstract “community”, the states added nothing and, indeed, got in the way.  As long as the central government followed its own rules, there would be nothing between it and the individual and little role for state governments.  It is not surprising that even some Federalists were alarmed enough by this prospect to push through the first ten amendments to the Constitution of 1787 even before it was adopted.   

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Part 3

Introduction    Part 1   Part 2

The Articles Amended

From 1781 to 1787, attempts were made to amend the Articles in three areas:  (1) to give Congress coercive power to compel the states to comply with its decisions; (2) to allow Congress to collect an impost (export and/or import duties); and (3) to authorize Congress to regulate trade.  James Madison sought to accomplish the first through a proposal in 1781 to give Congress a military and naval force, which could be used against the states if needed to enforce its authority.  Congress ignored the proposal and no other coercive authority was considered again until the Constitution of 1787 (or used until the American Civil War).  The latter two areas for change were seriously considered throughout the decade.

    Although contained in the original Dickinson draft, the Articles as finally accepted denied Congress the power to regulate trade.  It became increasingly clear, however, that trade suffered from the lack of uniformity of tariffs and regulations from state to state.  The states also came to agree on giving the Congress its own source of funds.  Focus centered on the collection of import duties, which would complement Congress’ role in regulating commerce.  By 1786, all the states had reached tentative agreement to grant Congress (for 15 years) the authority to regulate commerce.  However, the various forms of approval passed by the state legislatures remained to be reconciled.  All states except New York had agreed to the impost.  New York demanded that the states collect it, not the central government.  Congress resisted this provision.  In order to pass these final hurdles, the Congress decided to review the amendments for final passage by the states.  Congress formed the Grand Committee to accomplish this review and received its report in August 1786.  Congress delayed action on the report because of a heated debate over the Treaty with Spain.  The Federalists seized the initiative and Congress never again had the opportunity to return to the Grand Committee’s report.  Still the report may be taken as the confederation’s last words on itself.

    The Grand Committee’s report took the form of seven proposed additional articles of confederation.  Article 14 gave Congress the sole power to regulate foreign and domestic trade as well as the authority to levy import and exports imposts.  To meet New York’s objection, the revenue would be returned to the states where it was collected.  The impost would have to be passed by nine (or 9/13) of the states but would then be binding on all.

    Articles 15, 16 and 17 were to meet the problem of assuring Congress a reliable income.  They called for an elaborate system for collecting the requisitions on the states.  Any state that failed to meet its quota of funds (or military forces) could be assessed an additional sum of ten percent of the quota.  If the state still failed to deliver its assessment within ten months, and a majority of the states had already complied, Congress could then collect the sum itself.  It would do so by assessing and collecting taxes in a manner, and at the rate, last used by the state itself using state tax collectors supported by state sheriffs.  Congress could appoint its own assessors, collectors and sheriffs to enforce collection if the state refused to allow its officials to be used.  Should the states or its citizens still resist, the state’s conduct would be considered “an open violation of the federal compact.”  As a last resort, Article 18 empowered Congress, with the support of 11 of the 13 states, to institute a new tax system, which would be as binding as though passed by all the states.  This latter grant was to be provisional, expiring after 15 years.

    Article 19 gave Congress the authority to define treason and piracy.  It also established a national judicial court (appointed from the states as divided into seven regions) to try and punish all officers appointed by Congress.  This Court would also serve as the Court of Appeals from state courts on treaty matters, law of nations, trade and commerce regulation, and collection of confederal revenues.  Finally, Article 20 bound the states to fill their delegations in time for the first session of Congress and compelled the attendance of individual members.

    The amended Articles would have left the confederal nature of the central government unchanged as Congress would still have been denied the ultimate power to coerce the states into obedience.  Yet the amended Articles would have allowed the states a forum for agreeing on a uniform structure for foreign and domestic trade, thus finalizing the American economic union.  The amendments would have provided the Congress with a source of confederal income – the impost – while leaving it to the states to collect and funnel the funds back to the national government.  If, in the face of majority agreement, a state refused to participate in this system, only the moral force of the compact remained as Congress’ ultimate support.  The amended Articles also would have made provision for a supreme court that would help legally bind the states, but only in those areas where they agreed to establish national law.

    The proposed amendments were in accord with the Articles as a whole.  They were consistent with a confederation of states that was not a sovereign entity but one in the service of sovereign governments.  Only when a significant majority of the states “lent” their sovereignty to the confederation did it assume the semblance of superior power, and then only a kind of “moral” superiority as the institutionalization of the compact the states had made with themselves.  This is the defining characteristic of a confederation: power flows from lower levels and “resides” at the top only at the pleasure of the confederated entities.  The amended Articles went perhaps as far as a confederal system can go to empower the center without altering the nature of the system fundamentally.

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Part 2

Introduction    Part 1

The Articles Tested

    The Articles of Confederation responded to the practical necessities of the time, which at first centered on maintaining an army in the field to fight the British.  In this, the states shared one great purpose, to secure the independence they had declared together in the Declaration.  In spite of the difficulties the Continental Congress had in funding the war, the united states outlasted the British, and with the help of the French, defeated the chief world power of the day.  The confederated states passed one of the most difficult tests of any new government, winning independence.  This essential fact has been often overlooked in judging the Articles.

    The problems that the successful war left behind, however, severely tested the new confederation.  The chief problem was the debt.  The debt, incurred in order to pay for the war, threatened the ability of the new country to borrow further oversees.  Domestically, the inability to fully meet commitments to the army almost led to a military coup against the new government. 

   Perhaps the chief result of the debt was the controversy over paper money.  A severe post-war depression had ensued as the ex-colonies suffered a cut-off of their traditional source of finished goods in Britain.  The lack of specie held back domestic industry from taking quick advantage of the new home market.  It also became the focal point of a nascent class struggle between debtors - who favored cheap paper money to pay their loans - and creditors - who wanted a strong currency that would preserve the value of the debts owed them.  In state after state, the paper money question -- and the related issue of imposts (taxes) -- became the main political conflict.  The conflict over paper money contributed considerably to the premature abandonment of the confederation.

    In theory, the Articles empowered the Congress to requisition funds from the states to pay the debt represented by its paper securities.  The states, however, often fell in arrears.  Congress lacked its own taxing authority or the power to enforce its requests on the states.  This complicated efforts to retire the debt as quickly as its holders wished.  The conflict between debtors and creditors, exacerbated by the post-war recession, erupted in bitter state politicking and rioting.  To some, the violence (especially Shay’s Rebellion) appeared to threaten the ability of Congress to adequately preserve domestic peace and stability.  Thus the debt problem highlighted an apparent twin flaw in the Articles, Congress’ lack of taxing and enforcement authority.

    The United States faced apparent danger on the international front as well.  The overseas representatives of Congress felt that foreign governments were not according the new nation sufficient weight.  Spain threatened to close outlets for western trade and seemed poised to cut off any of the western territories of the states that became disaffected.  England still held on to several western forts in lieu of payment of money owed English businessmen. These factors contributed to the fear on the part of some that the confederation might prove too weak to protect itself from foreign aggression and intrigue.

    In spite of the confederation’s apparent shortcomings, often exaggerated by its opponents, it did not in fact perform all that poorly.  Given what we now know of the difficulties of developing nations and their foreign debt, the Congress and the states retired the war debt rather quickly.  The treasury received an average of $600,000 a year from the states.  Although the debt incurred during the war totaled about $200 million, by 1783 total domestic debt fell to about $34 to $42 million.  By 1787, the debt was essentially liquidated.  Throughout the 1780’s, the states and the Congress paid off their debts in whatever way proved acceptable given the shifts in relative political strength between debtors and creditors.  Without doubt, the general economic recovery during the decade contributed to the progress in dealing with the debt.  By mid-decade, domestic industry had expanded to fill the gap left by the British.  Foreign trade also increased greatly, surpassing pre-War levels. If the confederation could not take full credit for this recovery, neither did it deter it.

    In the field of international relations, in spite of the various threats, the confederation delivered the United States intact to the government of 1789.  The fear of intrigue and war remained a factor even after 1789, witness Aaron Burr and his “western empire” and the sacking of Washington during the War of 1812.  Indeed, the confederation achieved its greatest success in regard to settling the western lands.  To settle the question of western cession by the eastern states, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinances (during 1784-87).  These acts provided for an orderly process of admitting new and equally sovereign states into the confederation and became, in fact, the basis upon which future states were added to the union.

    Undeniably, there were flaws in the Articles.  Chief were the inability of Congress to assure itself of a reliable income and to regulate foreign trade.  Congress and the states recognized these problems and attempted before 1787 to address them.  These attempts failed because of a third problem in the Articles, the need for unanimous approval of the states to amend them.  But it is far from proven that these problems could not have been dealt with within the confederal framework.  That ultimately forces conspired to move outside the Articles of Confederation should not deter us from examining what the amended Articles might have looked like. 

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Part 1

Introduction

The Articles

The government of the Articles of Confederation fought and won the American Revolution. The confederation lasted 13 years, until 1789, the year that George Washington became the first president under the new constitution. The Articles established a confederal legal order, a national system of exchange and communication, and a permanent congress of the states to oversee common affairs. Yet Americans are largely ignorant of the existence of this distinctly American government founded as the political union of individual sovereign states.

The Articles were founded on the principle of state sovereignty and contained a pact of “perpetual union between the States.”  Each state retained “its sovereignty, freedom, and independence” except in those areas in which power was “expressly delegated” to Congress. (Preamble; Art. 2) The need to provide for a “common defense” motivated the states to enter “a firm league of friendship with each other.” (Art. 3) To promote this friendship and to further intercourse between the states, Article 4 extended to the citizens of each state the “privileges and immunities” of citizenship of whatever state to which they might travel. It also guaranteed free exit and entrance across state borders and forbade duties, taxes or restrictions on out-of-staters that a state government did not also impose on its own citizens. Article 4 called for extradition upon request and recognition by each state of the “records, acts and judicial proceedings” of the others.

A congress made up of delegates appointed by the state legislatures was established for “the more convenient management of the general interests of the united states.” The delegates could be recalled at any time. Although a state could send from two to seven delegates, each state had only one vote in congress. (Art. 5, 10 and 11)

The Articles forbade any state from pursuing its own foreign policy and regulated the terms under which the states could enter pacts with each other. Although the congress served as a court of appeal in conflicts between the states, the Articles protected the control of each state over its militia (reserving to Congress the authority to appoint general officers). (Art. 6, 7 and 9)

The Articles expressly denied congress the power to tax. But all defense expenses were to be paid out of a common treasury filled through requisitions levied on the states “in proportion to the value of all land within each state.” The states themselves would decide how to raise the money within the period allowed by congress. (Art. 8 and 11) Congress, however, received the authority to regulate the value of coin – national or state – as well as to fix the standard of weights and measures. Congress could also organize a postal system, charging fees to offset operating costs.

The Articles established, in short, a confederation, a non-sovereign union of sovereign states. That this first government of the United States should be confederal should not be surprising. Under British rule, the colonies had been politically independent of each other. When the tie with Britain ended, it left the colonies as a collection of independent, sovereign states with no formal political ties between them. During the Revolution, these newly independent polities saw a need for cooperation. They therefore sought a practical balance between independence and cooperation: they would work together to the extent it would benefit all of them, but no further.

In spite of the limited nature of this first effort at national cooperation, the motive of reciprocal advantage propelled the states far beyond a mere mutual-defense treaty. The Articles provided for a common, yet confederal, legal framework. The laws and legal proceedings of each state were mutually recognized. The Articles protected the freedom to travel and to do business across state lines. Such activities were subject to no more regulation that a state imposed on its own citizens. The Articles provided for a national mail system, a national system of weights and measures and a national currency in order to facilitate interstate communication between persons and traffic in ideas and goods. By these measures, the Articles assured the necessary minimal ground for the development of a national community.

The states further agreed to establish a legislative body to pursue the “convenient management” of their collective interest. The Congress became the vehicle to determine this “national” interest. Insofar as the national interest required coordinated action, Congress itself acted as the executive organ of government. This combined legislative and executive function of Congress was partly a reaction to the colonial experience of arbitrary executives. States such as Georgia and Pennsylvania went so far as to establish unicameral legislatures to avoid an “aristocratic” upper house. The newly constituted Continental Congress followed this same tradition, serving as the unicameral common legislature of the states and without a separate executive.

As a confederal assemby, the Congress could not escape the fact that the states held ultimate power. Given the responsibility of working toward the national interest, the Congress remained a body in which state met state to decide what that interest might be and how to realize it. A separate executive branch would have implied an authority greater than that of the states themselves. It was Congress, as the institutionalized committee of the states, that conducted the war for independence, and foreign policy in general, and directed whatever other joint undertakings the states found convenient.

The confederal framework established by the Articles went a long way towards providing the means by which the thirteen sovereign states could achieve a working social, economic and political unity (and went beyond the degree of common institutions found in today's European Union). The confederation made possible a degree of cooperation and exchange that could have allowed the already culturally bound states to build a nation without necessarily having to construct a nation-state. Certainly, this revolutionary course of development needed time to be tested and to be modified in light of experience. The forces of reaction gave the experiment just 13 years.