>> Thank you Justin for that introduction.
Thank you Kevin for everything that went into today's events.
Thank you to The Institute for the Study of the American Constitutional Heritage.
It's actually my third time in Norman which is a real treat for me.
But the first since moving to UT.
I have to say, you know, I was really worried that you guys were going
to be really hostile this time around.
But, I guess, you just don't care about UT football right now.
I wonder why?
I should actually confessed I grew up a Michigan fan
and so I'm really indebted to all of you guys.
Thank you for Ohio's State.
And so, in honor of that I wore the closest thing I have
to crimson and cream for the talk today.
If nothing else hopefully that gets me out of here without too many tomatoes.
When Kevin reached out to me about giving the Constitution Day lecture, I said,
"Oh my gosh, that sounds like so much fun.
Whatever should we talk about?
I mean, there's nothing interesting going on in constitutional law right now."
My favorite topic for Constitution Day lecture actually is --
has a pretty straightforward title, is the Constitution Day unconstitutional?
By the way, the short answer is yes.
So that lecture is going to be pretty sure.
Kevin said, "You know, you might actually want to have to, you know,
talk for more than five minutes."
So I took a look at what was going on in the headline and what a lot
of folks have been talking about.
And we thought it would be a good time to reflect a bit more generally
on what is a constitutional crisis and are we in one?
And just to give away the ending, in case you got to sneak out before hand,
The ice dragon burns down the wall.
No wait sorry.
Too soon. To give away the ending, the short answers are it's complicated and not yet.
So let me take a few minutes to unpack each of those points and tell you where I come from and,
hopefully, we'll have some time at the end for Q and A. So, what is a constitutional crisis?
Well, the definition I want to offer today is a bit wordy but I hope clearly conveys my point.
So, here we go.
A constitutional crisis arises whenever one of the institutions responsible
for preserving the checks and balances within our constitutional system loses the ability,
whether at its own hand, or that of others to do so.
That told you it was wordy.
This may seem like an arrow definition.
I mean by that logic there are lots of things that sound like crises
and feel like crises and are not crises.
But let me try to use a couple of case studies
to illustrate why I think this narrow definition is, in fact,
the proper way to think about the issue.
And, perhaps more importantly, why I think we should keep clear the difference
between a constitutional crisis which is a whole big problem and a political crisis
which may be actually more important in the moment that we live in
but perhaps less important in the long run of our constitutional system.
All right.
So, four case study.
Case study number one, the election of 1800.
And here, please forget everything you've learned from Hamilton the musical.
A little bit of artistic license in that song.
So, if you know your American history, right.
This was a battle between the Federalists and the so-called Democratic Republican.
Right. John Adams is seeking a second term
versus Thomas Jefferson's and a lesser extent, Aaron Burr.
Of course, right, what happens if there's a tie but the tie is between Jefferson and Burr
because under the Constitution as enacted, electors vote for two people without specifying
which one is supposed to be the president and which one's supposed to be the vice president.
And everyone was so nervous that the election was going to be close that it turns
out that all the Democratic Republican electors vote for both Jefferson and Burr.
Alright, so two interesting things happen.
First, this is my favorite part of this story,
Thomas Jefferson effectively counts himself into the presidency.
So, how does that happen?
We have to do a little bit of math.
I know you guys there is no math -- like on the flyer -- it said no math.
We'll do a little bit of math.
So in the election of 1800, the threshold for a majority was 70 electoral vote.
So 69, you wouldn't have a majority.
If you had 69 or fewer-- if no one had 70 or more, then the election went to the house
to choose among the top five, right, electoral vote getters.
If there was a majority and there was a tie, the founders contemplated the possibility,
the house would use among the two top vote-getters.
Well, turns out Georgia, thank you Georgia, screwed up their electoral votes.
Right, they were formatted incorrectly.
And Georgia had four electoral vote.
So if you didn't count George's for electoral votes, Jefferson and Burr would have 69.
And then that house would break the tie between the top five candidate
which included Jefferson, Burr, and three Federalist.
The Federalists lame duck house would break the tie.
So you had a real prospect for a crisis.
Not to worry, the presiding officer of the Senate is in charge
of counting electoral vote when they're open.
And in this case, the presiding officer open Georgia's electoral votes and decreed
that they were correct and proper and there was no problem whatsoever.
Who is the presiding officer of the Senate?
Thomas Jefferson.
Right. So, problem number one, Thomas Jefferson right into the two way tie by decree
of no problem with Georgia's electoral ballots.
Problem number two, deadlock.
The problem goes to the house.
The house tries to break the tie.
The first 35 ballots, right, there's no clear victor.
Everyone start to get freaked out.
It's February 17th.
Inauguration is supposed to be March 4th.
What happens if we get to March 4th and there's no confirmed president?
There's actually some debate about this.
There's actually a statue called Presidential Succession Act of 1792.
And there was an argument under the statute that if you got to March 4th with no president
and with a new Congress and no vice president,
the presidency would fall upon the Secretary of State.
Anyone know who the Secretary of State was?
John Marshall.
Who was a Federalist.
So, we had real trouble.
But on the 36th ballot, famously, Delaware break the tie.
Vote for Jefferson.
Everyone goes home.
Burr goes to kill Hamilton.
If you listen to the musical that's the order of events.
Not quite that easy.
Okay. Here's the question.
Was that a constitutional crisis?
I want to suggest, perhaps counter-intuitively, the answer is no.
That in fact, the system was working exactly the way it was supposed to.
Even if it was this [inaudible] cockamamie came to vote for the top two people as opposed
to a president and a vice president.
Right. But, look how close we were, right,
if we had gotten to March 4th with no resolution in the house.
Right. Then, yes, we would have had a constitutional crisis
because the system would have broken down, right?
Because the presidency would have fallen to someone no one voted for, right,
from a party that just got drowned on the Hustons.
And I think you would have seen I think perhaps even violence and response.
We avoided it.
We dodged that bullet.
Okay. Case study number two.
Let me jump over the one thing that, I think, everyone will agree was a constitutional crisis.
The Civil War and let's fast-forward to reconstruction.
So, Reconstruction, right, Andrew Johnson succeeds president Lincoln upon Lincoln's
assassination and then the Radical Republicans win huge majorities in both the house
and the senate in the 1866 midterms.
So, now we have a Democrat president, Democratic president, who is not super into the harshness,
right, of radical reconstruction.
We have veto-proof supermajorities of Radical Republicans in both the house and the senate.
The result is a bunch of, I think, really positive things like the Civil Rights act
of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment and so on.
But also some left positive things such as the Military Reconstruction Act, right,
which turned the South into a series of military District to be governed
by the army not by civil authority.
The Tenure of Office Act through Congress tries to prevent President Johnson
from firing any of his cabinet secretaries.
So, there's actually two episodes I want to highlight within Reconstruction.
The first episode is litigation over the Military Reconstruction Act.
So, this begins shortly after the act is passed with a lawsuit by the state of Mississippi.
And Mississippi sues President Johnson directly
in the Supreme Court invoking the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
And there's this remarkable moment --
keep in mind Andrew Johnson vetoed the Military Reconstruction Act,
thought they were unconstitutional, was vehemently opposed
to both their policy and their enforcement.
And, nevertheless, walks into the Supreme Court, well he sent his attorney general,
but his attorney general to argue that the Supreme Court has no power
to issue an injunction against him.
Right. Not because of the statute, but because he is the president
and they are the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court which is all too happy to avoid what would have been a cataclysmic ruling,
one way or the other, on the merits of the Military Reconstruction Act,
obliges and offer this very terse opinion
that the federal courts lack the power directly to enjoin the president.
This case, by the way, Mississippi versus Johnson being invoked by President Trump
on why he can't be forced to unblock people on Twitter.
So,I guess things come full circle.
But know what happened.
President Johnson in the midst of what could have been described a constitutional crisis
assert the constitutional authority of the executive branch
to defend again an action that he completely opposes.
Right. And to protect the prerogative of the executive branch.
To me, right, that the structure working the way it's meant to, not a constitutional crisis.
Fast forward to the Tenure of Office Act.
The Tenure of Office Act is passed shortly thereafter.
Again, President Johnson's vetoes it on constitutional grounds.
This time, right, Congress fires the gun.
This time Congress says, "Aha!
you've committed a high crime or misdemeanor and we can now impeach you."
And so the House of Representatives votes out 11 articles of impeachment although, honestly,
it's just 11 different way of saying ways
of saying he violated you violated the Tenure of Office Act.
Kind of funny.
Right? And the Senate tries Andrew Johnson and comes within one vote of removing him.
Right? The vote on three of the article was 35 to 19.
Had one more Senator voted for im --
voted for removal that would have been the two-thirds threshold required
by the Constitution.
Imagine if that would have happened.
Imagine if you had a president who was impeached purely for political reasons based
on a constitutional argument that was not well received at the time
and that the Supreme Court will, in fact,
will about forty years later hold to be unconstitutional.
Right? Imagine you had a purely partisan impeachment
of a president based solely on political differences.
I think that would have been a constitutional crisis.
We escaped that one by the skin of our teeth, but escaped it, I think, we did.
And you can say the same for the one impeachment of the Supreme Court Justice
in American history back in 1805 when the Democratic Republicans try
to impeach Federalist Justice Samuel Chase.
And again, the conclusion was, impeachment is not supposed to be
for pure partisan and political disagreement.
That too, was a close call.
Alright, so those are our first two case studies.
Right? The election of 1800, Reconstruction, moments where we came perilously close to what,
to me, was the constitutional cliff.
But, we're fortunate enough to not jump off.
Forward it to 1937 when we get to, what to me is it case study number three,
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt court-packing plan.
So, a little background.
Right. FDR is elected with huge majority in 1932.
Comes into office in 1933.
Has this massive wave of legislations a lot of it is actually relatively novel from perspective
of the types of power it was claiming.
And, you have a pretty conservative Supreme Court led by four conservative justices
which were known as the time as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
This was, just to show you how college football is everywhere,
this was not a Biblical reference this was a reference
to the Notre Dame backfield of the 1920s.
So, even in 1925, college football was defining the national conversation.
I think in Norman I can say that without getting into too much trouble.
Okay. So, FDR has a really bad year in the Supreme Court.
And the bad year is 1935.
The Supreme Court strikes down three of the major center pieces of the New Deal program.
The Supreme Court asserts various limits on presidential power
that had not been previously recognized.
And in at least an a couple of cases the courts were unanimous, forget the four horsemen,
even the more progressive justices were aligned against FDR.
So, FDR in the 1936, runs as much against the Supreme Court
as he runs against any Republican opponent.
Wins the landslide period is returned to Congress in huge majorities
in both houses and decides the time has come.
So, early and 1937 he launches what he styles as a completely benign effort to account
for rapidly aging federal judiciary.
And what FDR says is "our judges are old and we need to help out the old judges."
So for every judge who has reached the age of 70 or above we're going to add another seat
to that court whatever cord it might be be,-- any court, anywhere in the country.
What a coincidence, six of the nine Supreme Court Justices had reached the age of 70.
And so, the bill, if passed, would have expanded the size of the Supreme Court
to 15 with 6 brand-new FDR nominees.
I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.
And this is basically viewed, I think correctly, as a direct assault not just on the court
of that time but on the independence of the judiciary in general.
Had FDR been successful in expanding the size of the Supreme Court,
I think it would have seriously damaged the Supreme Court as an institution.
More importantly, I think, it would have set the precedent for any party once it gained control
of both houses of Congress and the presidency,
to expand the Supreme Court to its own political benefit.
The Supreme Court today would have 91 justices.
That would be awkward.
Instead, right, two things happened.
And I think historians are split as to which was causal and which was more of a byproduct --
indeed if as to whether they were even related.
The first thing that happens is FDR meets, at least what was to him, surprising resistance.
A surprising backlash from members of his own party in the House and especially the Senate.
Right. For one, the Court as an institution you appears more important
than the politics of the moment.
But then, too, perhaps more famously to students is the switch in time.
Where on March 29th, 1937, Justice Owen Robert switches his vote, right,
in the West Coast Hotel versus minimum wage case which is the harbinger of the fundamental shift
in the Court's approach to economic regulation and basically por-tens of deference
to legislatures that follow and with it, basically,
the withholding of almost all all of the major New Deal program.
So, you know I think there are a couple ways to look at this episode.
One, once again, you came perilously close to a constitutional cliff where the credibility
and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court would have been damaged if not, you know,
indefinitely, at least for a long time.
Two, we averted it because one or both of the institution, not necessarily pushed back,
but found ways to abate the crisis.
Found ways to at least tone things down.
FDR then abandoned the court-packing plan.
He says, because he's become convinced it was unwise.
When, in fact, it had become unnecessary.
Okay. Last and perhaps most recently.
This might be the one that's, sort of, most on everyone's minds.
Watergate.
Right. I think there are lots of reasons to compare Watergate to various things
that are going on around us today.
So, let's start with the first, sort of, moment of real crisis.
This Saturday Night Massacre.
So, President Nixon want to fire the special prosecutor investigating Watergate,
Archibald Cox.
Right. He orders his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to do it.
Richardson says, no thank you and resigns or is fired depending on your perspective.
I go with resigned.
Then, he orders Richardson Deputy, Ruffle Shoust [phonetic] to do it, Ruffle Shoust says no.
He's out. And then Robert Bork, who is at the time the solicitor general,
and on the line of succession was the acting attorney general
with those two out, says he'll do it.
Right. Was the Saturday night Massacre a constitutional crisis?
I submit to you the answer is no.
Right. That under the regulations as they existed,
the president had the unquestioned power to fire the special prosecutor.
He had the unquestioned power to fire the attorney general
for not firing the special prosecutor with political consequences.
And this is one of the point that really comes through.
Right. Sometimes the appropriate response to what seems like a constitutional is
in fact a political reaction not a legal one.
Right. That those kinds of measures are supposed
to be understood to trigger a political reaction.
And if the president had political support to do it then we tend to think it's within his power.
Alright? What happens next?
Well, there's political blowback.
In response to Saturday Night Massacre.
Congress really, I think, at that point dark to get really, how shall I say it, ornery?
-- about the whole investigation.
Congress really ratchets up its investigation.
A new special prosecutor is appointed.
This time one who is, there is this sort of deal made where Jaworski won't be fired, right?
And no one will be instructed to fire him.
And what happened?
Well, Congress and the new special prosecutor both subpoena the infamous tapes.
So, we have subpoenas for the tapes, the case goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court
in July of 1974 rules that Nixon have to comply
with the subpoena and has to turn over the tapes.
Was that a constitutional crisis?
I would say no.
Alright? What if Nixon ignored the Supreme Court?
Haha this is where now it gets interesting.
Well the supreme court orders him to turn over subpoenas, to turn over these cape
and he doesn't do it that must be a constitutional crisis.
Maybe. But one thing would have happened for sure if Nixon had refused to turn
over the tapes, he would have been impeached.
He would have been in at least in part for refusing to turn over the tapes.
Instead, he turns over the tape.
The tapes end up inculcating him rather dramatically
and he resigned several weeks later on the eve of impeachment.
Right? Is this an example of a constitutional crisis?
I want to suggest that the answer is no.
Right? That the institutions actually worked the way they were designed to under pressure.
The president put pressure on the institutions by firing his subordinates
to achieve a particular if controversial policy outcome.
The political branches, the House and the Senate pushed back.
The Court pushed back.
Right? And it culmanated in what was a constitutionally appropriate de nu mieux
[assumed spelling].
So in each of these moments of unquestioned political crisis,
we came perilously close to a real constitutional crisis.
Closer than I think we often accept.
Right? One or two things change in each of these stories
and if we had much more serious of a matter and an episode.
But something happened for better or for worse to prevent us from going over the precipice.
Moreover, although the individual actors and, or institutions may have overstepped their bounds
in each of my examples and plenty of others.
Right?
The Constitution structure worked in each of these contexts
with the relevant constitutional mechanism serving perhaps more slowly
than we might have liked to avoid for at least a bait the real crisis.
Right? I guess all of this is leading toward this conclusion that we actually have lots
of political crisis in this country but we've been lucky, at least so far in our history,
to experience relatively few constitutional crises.
So, I guess what all that suggests is
that within those contact it was the Constitution itself that function, for better
or for worse again, to prevent a constitutional crisis.
Alright, so let's take these lessons, such as they are, and apply them to the present moment.
The present moment.
I always feel like I have to take a deep breath when we turn to the present moment.
So, for starters, it seems to me beyond that the president of the United States has gone
out of his way to attack each of the institution that are designed to serve as a check
on him including the formal checks of the legislature and the courts
and the informal check provided by the media.
I don't think that is a controversial statement.
I think everyone would agree that yes the president attacks his institutions.
But, has he actually done anything?
Is there anything beyond tweets to undermine the actual authority of those institutions
to do their job and serve their function?
Let's take them one at a time.
So let's start with the legislature.
So it seems to me that there are three interesting flashpoints When it comes
to the president's relationship with Congress.
First, and perhaps least interesting, is his new found obsession
with getting rid of the filibuster.
Right? Whatever you think of the filibuster it is the creature of Senate rules.
It is not part of the Constitution.
You know, I think that it obviously causes a huge policy concern no matter whether you're a
Democrat or a Republican or an Independent or, you know, a Martian,
but as a constitutional matter I just don't see people getting exercised about having
or getting rid of the filibuster or ordinary legislation especially if you accept, as I do,
that the Senate has the power at any moment by a majority vote to get rid of the filibuster.
A better example, I think, is the assertions
of what has been called the non-privileged privilege.
So there have been a series of witnesses, government employee witnesses,
who and both well notice and much less interesting Congressional hearings have invoked
a new kind of executive privilege Where they're not even invoking privilege,
their invoking their right to not even assert executive privilege.
This is a new thing, by the way.
In other words, right, the way this usually the way this is supposed
to work is an executive branch witness goes to Congress, is asked a question he
or she doesn't want to answer, asserts executive privilege and there's a fight
about whether the privilege is validly asserted.
That's the way the structure is supposed to work.
What happened when you have this non-privileged privilege issue is you have indications
of something that sounds like executive privilege but,
until and unless Congress forces the witness
to formally assert executive privilege, he or she is off the hook.
Alright? This strikes me as not yet a constitutional problem.
But note the role of Congress, right.
The executive branch, in a way, thumbing its nose at the compulsory powers of Congress
to compel testimony or evidence., Congress hasn't reacted be asserting them.
Right? To me, the problem arises if we get to a point where Congress pushes back and says no,
you must assert the privilege and then things go off the rails.
So, again, right, we're kind of move -- rolling down that mountain, but pretty slowly.
Third, right, for all the talk and I am one who does a lot of this talk,
that Congress has been largely feckless over the last eight months.
Consider the Jeff Sessions firing and trial balloon.
Right. So there's a lot of talk a couple weeks ago
about the president's desire to fire Jeff sessions.
We learned kind of late last week that the president in fact had an offer from Session
to resign and there was speculation that the president might do all kinds of shady things
to put someone in the Attorney Generalship who might be much more willing to try
to shut down the Russian investigation.
What got much less attention was a statement by Senator Charles Grassley,
the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that quote "We are too busy
for any more confirmation hearings".
Unquote. Ask to clarify, Senator Grassley said,
"There will not be another attorney general confirmation hearing this year period."
Right? So that sounds like, you know, okay, politics whatever people.
People just saying what they're going to say.
That's the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee telling the president
that if he fires Sessions he's not getting him a successor.
Right? That's actually a pretty powerful -- I realize we're desperately looking for signs.
Right? But actually that's a pretty powerful one, right.
That Congress is not actually wholely rolling over.
That Congress is paying some attention to what is going on.
That Congress is just sort of at least a little bit
of this institutional priority and privileges.
So, with regard to the legislature, I think there's nothing really there yet.
Maybe a better example is the courts.
President Trump, not a big fan of the court.
Or so his Twitter feed tells me.
Of course, right, there's the whole judge Curiel [phonetic] situation.
There's this ongoing tweets about the travel ban.
And let me just say, I think Neil Catial who's the lawyer for the state
of Hawaii has said this best, "The president has basically become co-counsel
to the challengers in the travel ban cases.
Every time they need something he helps them out."
Right. The president attacks on the court though have been purely rhetorical.
He has done absolutely nothing to suggest non-compliance with these decisions.
The government has responded to every single order in these cases in a matter
that was procedurally appropriate.
Right. There was compliance all up and down.
Even the grandparents.
There was this whole stink about the grandparents and the guidance
from the government that act the Supreme Court, June 26th ruling in the travel ban case,
the government was still going
to exclude grandparents even though those are clearly, right, close family members.
That's just a fight over interpretation.
Which the government then lost in court and then comply.
Right. So, to me, again, we have to separate the bark from the bite.
The president talks a big game but I think we will often find with him there's not much there.
Okay. The more interesting moment for me when it comes to the court is the pardon
of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
I was a law clerk after law school on the 9th curcuit, the federal appeals court
for the west coast including Arizona.
Joe Arpaio is a jobs program for lawyers.
Especially civil rights lawyers.
And so the president pardoned Sheriff Arpaio when the underlying offense was contempt
of court because Sheriff Arpaio had been disobeying court orders and continue
to profile what he believed to be Mexican national as part
of his immigration enforcement policies.
Of course, this sounds bad.
It sounds like it's an attack on the courts.
You have an executive officer, Sheriff Arpaio, who is disrespecting the courts.
Who is held in contempt for doing so and the president let him off the hook.
And my response is that how the pardon power works.
There's actually a Supreme Court decision directly on point from 1925 written
by Chief Justice, and we might add former president, William Howard Taft
that the pardon power extends to contempt of court.
Right. The theory being that the pardon in power is actually a check built
into the Constitution for abusive by the court.
And, if there's a concern, Taft literally says this in his opinion
in ex parte Grossman 92 years ago.
He said a real concern that the powers being used abusively or in a manner that just designed
to help your friends or patronage,
then the remedy the Constitution provides is called impeachment.
Right. So, again this is not a breakdown
in the Constitutional sure it's just a politically objectionable,
politically problematic development.
Okay, so that's the court.
Of course we'll see what happens with the travel ban case is going forward.
Perhaps they'll be moot.
Perhaps the president will reinvigorate the travel ban between now and October 10th
but more tweets are surely to come.
And let me last say a bit about the media.
Because I actually think this is the area where there's cause
for concern that might be the most grave.
So there's been lots of problematic commentary and media access policies.
The White House, for it time had stopped allowing a video recordings
of the daily briefing.
I love the surreptitious video recording.
That was hilarious.
But, I mean, to be frank, there have been no actual effort to go after the press whether
for libel as the president has repeatedly promised he would or for its role in leaks
which has long been a concern of the media.
Right, that the government might ramp up its ability to use prosecutorial tools especially
in National Security cases for ordinary news gathering.
Even the -- The only real news story that we have with regards to the media was last month
when the justice department had this much ballyhooed press conference
where Attorney General Session talks about how much tougher they're going to be on leaks
and reporters and we're going to revisit everything.
He didn't actually change any policy.
Right. Nothing actually change the result of that press conference.
And so, what we have, right, is it again, the rhetoric out stripping the reality.
Where it sounds like things are actually much worse than what they are
and where the political crisis is being confused for a constitutional one.
Now, let me see -- let me sort of underscore this last point.
Right. All of this could change and in a hurry if, for example,
the president starts defying traditional decision, or refusing to comply with subpoenas,
or prosecuting reporters, or finding ways to subvert Congress.
My point this afternoon is that we're not there yet.
Now, that there's no constitutional crisis does not mean that we're not
in the middle of a political crisis.
And I do think that we are in the midst of a sustained
and serious crisis of politics in this country.
But that crisis predate this president by a fair amount of time and it will continue after he is
out of office, whenever that may be.
And whether it's cause or effect it seems to me impossible to sever the link
between the political crisis and the polarization of Congress to the point
where things that never would have been viewed as partisan,
as recently as a decade ago are cast today wholly in partisan term.
I am looking at you, Russia.
The real question it seems to me then even on Constitution,
is whether this political crisis increase the likelihood of a constitutional crisis
at least insofar in particular is unable or unwilling to use the authority it clearly has
to respond to the envelope pushing executive branch.
And here again I would hearken back to the non-privilege privilege example.
Right. If Congress is really going to allow executive branch witnesses to come proport
to testify, not really invoke privilege and not answer questions, eventually if that repeats
in perpetuity, you could get to a constitutional crisis.
We're just not there yet.
So, in this regard, I'm reminded of an old story about a freshman Democrat in the house.
And I actually did some research on this.
It actually likely originated as a quote by Sir Winston Churchill but the West Wing picked it up
and turned it into a quote by a House member and so, today, every reference is to the house
and you can't find any pre West Wing references to it being an American construct.
But, bear with me.
So the way the West Wing tells the story, though it really sounds like Churchill.
the Democratic House member is walking around the hill with a senior member of his party.
This guy is a freshman and he says where are the Republicans?
I want to meet the enemy.
And the senior member pats their freshman on this Soldier and says, no no no.
The Republicans aren't the enemy.
They're the opposition.
The Senate, now that the enemy.
Does anyone think like that anymore?
This was whether it's apocryphal or not how the separation of powers used to function.
The House and the Senate were almost separate branches.
Right. And instead we don't ever talk like that today.
Ours is increasingly a system favoring a separation
of parties rather than a separation of powers.
And when you have divided government in Washington it tends to work out okay at least
in the sense that nothing happens.
But, when you have one-party rule, you have a real concern for break down, right,
even in the Constitutional tracks.
And it's so I guess my sort of bottom line and closing, right,
is that we've been lucky thus far that this trend hasn't cause,
or at least hasn't prevented, Congress from stopping a real constitutional crisis.
But, given the world we live in, it may just be a matter of time
or tweets before our luck runs out.
Thank you very much.
For more infomation >> (November 01, 2017)An aspiring rapper claims his girlfriend's anger is ruining... - Duration: 40:32. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét