Partisans warn of doom if their agenda isn’t enacted, but their expedient is what threatens the republic.
Americans divide power again and again because we don’t want it at the center of life. We distinguish between the private and public sectors. We privilege the private sector because it’s pluralistic and persuasion-based. In the public sector, we divide power among local, state and federal governments, deferring jurisdiction over most topics to the elected officials closest to the people. We do this for the sake of accountability, experimentation and comparison, and to limit the possibility of cascading failures.
Articles I, II and III of the Constitution divide power among three federal branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Each branch checks the others, but the Founders put the most authority in legislative hands. As a result, we divide lawmaking power yet again, between two very different bodies. We put the House and Senate on different time horizons and give them different constituencies.
The upper house is built for the long view, with six-year terms that encourage a deliberative trustee model of representation. Senators owe their states both judgment and conscience. The House provides faster-loop warnings about public frustrations.
The filibuster prevents the dramatic pendulum swings that are the natural result of simple-majority lawmaking. Every election and every vote becomes an existential crisis in a system that no longer plods through checks and balances but instead rushes to European-style referenda.
It’s a partisan’s dream: Court packing, new states, federal takeover of state elections, national adoption of Utah’s gun laws or New York’s abortion laws. Sweeping changes to nearly every aspect of national and local life.
The reality is that once the dam breaks, the stakes will climb endlessly higher. For every X on the right, there’s a Y on the left. Without the filibuster, we’ll have a never-ending cascade of doom-peddlers telling Americans our best days are behind us unless we secure 51 immediate votes for their golden legislative ticket.