And Then, There Were Two

Partisan politics in the United States is often an exercise in demonstrating that of all of the things that it's possible to protect human institutions from, humans are not among them. The general model of the United States, both at the state and federal level, is a tripartite separation of powers. The Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches are meant to be a system of "checks and balances" on one another.

Which is good, in theory. But in practice, that theory is breaking down, rapidly. Relatively recently the President of the United States has become the recipient of a new leadership position. In addition to being head of state, and head of government, they are also the defacto head of their political party. This had lead to what operates like a merging of the Executive and Legislative branches of the government. Given that these two branches then (often) control who is allowed into the Judicial branch, they can then oversee a merger of the entire system. Note that in some states, the Judicial branch is an elected body of its own; but to the degree that Governors are often seen as the heads of their parties at the state level, and partisan forces tend to align the interests of Governors and co-partisan Legislatures in the same way that a President and Congress of the same party have similar interests, those same partisan forces also directly act on elected judges.

So what we are witnessing is a replacement of the idea that checks and balances operate between branches of government with the idea that they operate between parties. The confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett are a pointless exercise in partisan bickering for this reason. She's being elevated to the Supreme Court as an explicit partisan; her role is not to work with other members of the Court to check out-of-bounds behavior by Congress or the President. Rather, it's to check behavior on the part of Democrats that upsets Republican ideas of right and wrong. This doesn't count as a dirty little secret or even an open one; it's pretty difficult to pay any attention at all to the process that's taken over here and not see this plain as day. I'm not even sure that it counts as hypocrisy; it's merely a continuation of a more general habit that many Americans can be said to have of insisting on being seen in a manner of their choosing, even when it flies in the face of demonstrable reality. And while American ideals do frown on the exercise of naked power, people's interests do not. This creates an interesting dichotomy; neither the United States as a nation nor a majority of Americans as individuals seem to be above using power that they have over others to insist on being seen as idealistic and principled.

Of course, the political parties don't see themselves as having chosen self-interest over idealism; I suspect that they are somewhere between honestly believing they've sublimated their interests and simply being unable to see a difference. In this, I understand that I'm swimming against a tide; conventional wisdom tends to hold that partisan leaders (especially on the "other" side, but sometimes on one's own) are deeply cynical to the point of villainy, knowing right, yet doing wrong. Personally, I suspect that it's more dangerous when people sincerely feel that the purpose of power over others is to enforce the right, rather than elide responsibility for intentional wrongs.

And as the two primary political parties in the United States entrench themselves ever deeper into mutually hostile ideological camps the problem will deepen. Although perhaps I shouldn't refer to the parties here, as common discourse tends to make a distinction between the parties and the public, and I think that everyday citizens are just as on board with this as the Vice President or the Senate Minority Leader.