The Slow Poisoning of Politics

Perhaps you saw today's column by David Brooks in the New York Times. The column is ostensibly about the Roe v. Wade decision, but it's not clear where Brooks stands on the underlying issue of abortion. What is very clear is that brooks thinks that the Roe decision was a disaster for the country, and the ultimate genesis of the evolving partisan malaise that has the Senate on the brink of a major change that he believes will damage it.

Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American. When he and his Supreme Court colleagues issued the Roe v. Wade decision, they set off a cycle of political viciousness and counter-viciousness that has poisoned public life ever since, and now threatens to destroy the Senate as we know it.

When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue.

The battles over abortion rights in the state legislatures would have been ferocious, but in the end healthy for the country and both the political parties. A very sensitive issue would have been fully explored and the parties and political leadership would have been fully engaged with the constituencies. I like to see issues battled in the representative bodies. That's a basic tenet of my Radical Centrist beliefs; that representative government works and we ought not to be afraid of a heated but peaceful fight in the statehouse or Capitol. The abortion laws would probably vary by state, and that would, in the end, work out fine. Those who are concerned that poor women unable to travel would not be able to obtain a legal abortion could make a donation to Planned Parenthood or some other organization to provide transportation and treatment. That problem could be solved.

Brooks points out that the battle has instead been fought in courts and in judicial nominations, to a very bad effect. You could argue that all the wrangling over judicial appointments isn't just about abortion, in the same way you can argue that the Civil War was not really all about slavery. You would be wrong in the same way too. If Roe v. Wade was not hanging over the courts, we would never be looking at changing the Senate rules, and we would have likely avoided some of the bitter confirmation battles (Bork?) that have pushed our political camps into escalating hunts for retribution.

I do think that Brooks overstates the risk to the Senate if the rules are changed. The Senate rules are the way they are, and have stayed the way they are for so long, because most Senators from both parties like the way they work. Removing the right to filibuster nominations does not automatically mean that all filibusters will be banned. Even the most confident Republicans are aware that they will be in the minority again someday. I expect that they will want to make a show of respect and solidity for the rights of the minority party to filibuster on bills, just to prevent similar rules changes when it is their turn to play obstructionist.

Even so, Brooks has raised a very telling point that is not often discussed. Moving major issues out of the appropriate forum into the courts is ultimately corrosive to the democracy.

The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can't stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better.