On Senate Rules

September 28, 2013September 28, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Having voted yesterday 79-19 to invoke cloture on the debate of the House’s Joint Resolution 59 as well as to authorize the Senate Majority Leader to defeat the House’s measure with a simple 51-member majority, it is reminiscent of what Coolidge once said of Senate rules. As Vice President according to the Constitution, Coolidge served as the presiding officer of the Senate from 1921 to 1923. It was, needless to say, an educational and preparatory time for him.

“At first I intended to become a student of the Senate rules and I did learn much about them, but I soon found that the Senate had but one fixed rule, subject to exceptions of course, which was to the effect that the Senate would do anything it wanted to do whenever it wanted to do it. When I had learned that, I did not waste much time on the other rules, because they were so seldom applied.”

Having successfully completed this show vote of fake opposition yesterday, most of this body can go back to “business as usual,” ignoring their constituents and trusting that time (and their voters) will forget what they have done by November of next year. Having voted to make funding Obamacare easier (79-19) they can tell their constituents they fought the good fight by voting against it in the next roll call (54-44-2). Conveniently omitting their role in empowering a 51-vote majority, they can hope to fool the people. Only 19 Senators refused to play this political charade.

It is worthwhile to recall Coolidge’s warning about the majority of these officeholders, “Nothing is more dangerous to good government than great power in improper hands.” If the Senate is to change its ways, it is up to us, the people, to send to it members of wisdom and character. Next year affords the opportunity to select or reject 33 of them. It serves us well to know who they are, for what they have voted and send them home if they are not faithfully representing us.

On Autocracy and Bad Decisions

September 26, 2013September 27, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

“Of course it would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it, they pay the penalty, but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant” — Calvin Coolidge, quoted from Adequate Brevity, p.76.

The people do make mistakes in the selection of their leaders. Elections cast the longest shadows, it seems, when bad decisions are made. We are still groping to calculate the costs of the 2008 election, not to mention the two which have occurred since that time. No political persuasion can seriously deny the fact that elections have real and enduring consequences.

It is what Coolidge is saying, in his inimitable way, between the lines that speak volumes. Coolidge would observe on other occasions that if self-seeking, unfit and complacent representation exists in Washington it is because those same vices reside in the voters who put them in office. The voter who never takes the time to learn the substance of the candidate will find the politician never takes the time to responsibly represent that voter.

Still, Coolidge was no cynic, even when it came to politics. He saw the fundamental difference between the conscientious and the careless to come down to one key ingredient: does the officeholder trust the people he represents? Trust is not the blind suspension of one’s judgment. Coolidge would remark on another occasion, “This does not mean that the opinion of constituents is to be ignored. It is to be weighed most carefully, for the representative must represent.” What the people “think determines every question of civilization.” Yet the officeholder has a more sacred obligation to uphold his oath. Constituents can be wrong. They can demand things they should not have. The commitment to keep faithfully to the Constitution and the laws compel him or her with a force outmatching even the most respectable opinion against it. This conscientious struggle to honor their oaths is not the dilemma in Washington. Theirs is a grave listening problem.

Trust is more than a regard or respect for the people one represents. It has nothing to do with personalities. The condescending arrogance of far too many officeholders seem to block out an honest view of problem. It has everything to do with distrust of liberty. It means nothing to convene a town hall meeting without an unwavering faith in what America is. To do otherwise is form without substance, cover truth with an attractive lie. Trust demands loyalty to as well as confidence in the republican design of our system. It is more than carefully-timed expressions of courage to be dispensed with when the time to fight on principle comes.

Coolidge is saying the autocrat does not know he is wrong. He never detects the gravity of his errors because he never experiences the price for them. He is never wrong. Numbed to reality, he is desensitized to the pain of his own actions. He knows better than the governed. His judgment is superior to the wisdom and political sense of the people or their institutions. He continually doubts the ability of the people to govern themselves, exercising their liberties responsibly. He must do it for them. It is too dangerous a world without him or her. They need him to furnish security, stability and surety from the hazards and risks of an unrestrained mob. If his objectives fall short, it is because the people are too stupid to know what is good for them in his or her superior judgment. They failed the autocrat, not he them. Such is the road to serfdom, as Frederick von Hayek coined it. Such is the way to train the people for the yoke.

Coolidge, fully aware that “[a] large part of the history of free institutions is the history of the people struggling to emancipate themselves from unrestricted legislation,” kept an abiding faith in the people to know far better than any autocrat what was best for them. He kept his confidence unshaken that the people are justified with the freedom of making their own choices and will ultimately make the right determination. They would make mistakes, personally and politically, but never learn the surpassing worth of liberty if insulated from not only its risks but also its rewards. Through permanently-affixed training wheels, autocratic authority demands both the eradication of opportunity and the removal of distinctions in order to preserve power. Not even the most foolish mistake by the people could compare with the trail of devastation realized throughout history when a conceited and self-deluded autocracy is at helm.

On Remaining Under Law or Man?

September 25, 2013September 25, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

In early 1919, Governor Coolidge received a bill in which the State Legislature had voted to raise their own salaries by fifty percent. It was fully expected that the Governor would sign the bill and everyone would let it quietly slip by the people of Massachusetts. They underestimated with whom they were dealing. Coolidge launched a fiery veto of the measure, in which he shot back, “Those in whom is placed the solemn duty of caring for others ought to think of themselves last or their decisions will lack authority. There is apparent a disposition to deny the disinterestedness and impartiality of government. Such charges are the result of ignorance and an evil desire to destroy our institutions for personal profit. It is of infinite importance to demonstrate that legislation is used not for the benefit of the legislator, but of the public.”

Coolidge had no sympathy for those who take their public trust as an opportunity to aggrandize, profit or otherwise serve themselves with the laws they pass. Legislators had to be brought back to this reality. They were, and will remain, under the rules they write for everyone else.

The people, to whom the costs fall, ultimately see to it that politicians do not successfully legislate their own escape clauses. Through years in the State House, Coolidge saw the need to resist this dangerous trend of legislators, who carve out special provisions or exceptions in their own bills. From that experience he urged his father as the elder Coolidge prepared to serve in the Vermont Senate, “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.” Coolidge recognized, with equal fidelity to his oath as President, his responsibility to check this impulse in Washington. Speaking to labor leaders from the White House, he declared, “The Government of the United States is not for the gratification of the people who happen to hold office. It is established to promote the general welfare of all the people. That is the American ideal. No matter how many officeholders there may be, or what their origin, our institutions are a failure unless they serve all the citizens in their own homes. It is always necessary to find out what effect the institutions of Government and society have on the wage earner, in order to judge the disability of their continuance.”

When Ronald Reagan spoke out in October 1964, ten months after President Johnson announced his “War on Poverty” which would form the basis of the Great Society later that same year, he observed an all too rare occurrence in government social experiments: They never read us the score. We never hear how each new effort to eradicate the evils of society with legislation makes conditions worse every time. Government programs and the appropriations claimed necessary to fund them are sold on the lofty promises of good intentions mixed with the fear of chaos if Washington is not given room to act. What is never included in the rush to legislate is the honest discussion of the problem, the truthful calculation of cost, the price not only in tax dollars but also in human lives. The cost is never so high at the initial estimates as it is in the end. Moreover, the end never comes. The program never achieves its purpose and the problem never resolves. The costs only increase, monetarily and spiritually.

Those with the audacity to ask whether “Program X” or “Act Y” is working are rebuked as unfeeling and devoid of compassion. The good intentions of the what LBJ touted as “the best thought and broadest knowledge” are supposed to silence all questions, trusting that Washington, with its purest intentions, has it in hand and with just a little more time we can wipe poverty away, cure all inequities, and make a happy, healthy and content people.

Coolidge saw all this for the fraud it is, saying, “There can be no perfect control of personal conduct by national legislation.” He knew the outcome of naively expecting more than mere legislation can ever produce, when he said, “Laws are insufficient to endow a nation with righteousness” or again, when he observed, “Real reform does not begin with a law, it ends with a law. The attempt to dragoon the body when the need is to convince the soul will end only in revolt.” Even legislation passed which is “changed and changeable on slight provocation, loses its sanctity and authority.” Too many pieces of legislation over these last five years had little sanctity or authority at their beginnings to the shame of those who helped pass them.

When “train wrecks,” like Obamacare (set to go into effect on Tuesday), find a President arbitrarily waiving parts of the law to exempt the lawmakers, it is time for the people to again exercise their sovereign authority. When that same President and a timid and willing Senate then keeps other provisions in place on the backs of the rest of us, it is time for reality, through the voice of the people, to return to Washington. It is time for Americans to reassert the standards of our foundation. Coolidge identified it this way, “Our country has maintained the principle that our Government is established for something higher and finer than to permit those who are charged with the responsibility of office, or any class whose favor they might seek, to get what they can get out of it.”

We have gone too long without hearing the score. In reality, Washington is winning while liberty is losing. It did not get here quickly and it will take decades to get back. But this is what gives us all the more urgency to act now. We are no longer looking at these problems as Coolidge saw them: approaching from afar. They are already in our midst. Doing the right, while never easy, is historically the simplest and most obvious course. It is the choice between a very real evil and the genuinely fulfilling good. Either we are a republic of laws over human whims, holding the light of constitutional self-government aloft in this world, or we are ready to recede back into the ancient darkness of despotic kings, permanent immobility, and hereditary classes dispensing freedom or oppression to us as they see fit. It is the impasse plotted by Coolidge when he said, “The choice lies between living under coercion and intimidation, the forces of evil, or under the laws of the people, orderly, speaking their settled convictions, the revelation of a divine authority.”