Chapter 1. Introduction to A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Last Updated: 1-5-2013
Copyright 2008-13
OUTLINE
I. Purposes
of This E-Text
II. Some
Basic Terms and Ideas
A.
Republics and Democracies–The Question of Who Should Govern
B.
Politics and Power–Personal and Public
C.
Government
D.
Ideology and Party–Differences and Similarities
E.
Federalism–What Level of Government Should Have Power
III. Plan of
the Text–Chapter Organization
IV. Policy
A.
Policy
and the text
B.
Health
Care Policy
V. Final
Introductory Comments
TEXT
I. Purposes
of This E-Text
Every
text has a “hook” to entice students to read it, to create interest, and to
improve understanding. This text is no different, except perhaps that it has
several hooks. First is the “pocketbook” hook. You’re not going to read a text
if you can’t afford to buy it. Affordability is an ever greater problem for
college students. This e-book is very affordable—it’s free! If you just read it
on-line or listen to it in MP3 form (forthcoming—not available quite yet),
it costs you nothing. If you print it, the major cost is printing. People often
say that “you get what you pay for.” This time I hope you get a lot more than
what you paid!
You do not need $ for
this text! (public domain)
Second,
the text is conversational in style. I tried to avoid complicated wording and
terms. I use as little political science jargon as possible. Sentences will
usually be short and to the point. Paragraphs will be short. So I will use the
first person, saying “I” a lot, and I will address “you” a lot as well. A
conversational style also works well for an audio version of the text.
Conversational style
of text should make reading easier (public domain)
Third,
if you’re a typical college student, you probably know very little about
government and politics in general and American government and politics in
particular. You probably know that the national government has three branches.
You probably can name them. You almost certainly know the name of the current
president and know a two term limit exists. You probably know the first ten
amendments to the Constitution are called the “Bill of Rights.” You may even
know what some of them are, but not more than a few. You probably know a few
other random facts.
But
that’s about it. You probably don’t know the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, the Speaker of the House, or the chair of the “Fed” (the nickname for
the Federal Reserve System), or even what the Fed does. You probably
erroneously think that the president has the power to “declare” war (though in
an indirect way you are right—presidents are good at starting many undeclared
wars). You may even think that we have a national religion and an official
national language—we have neither. You may have a vague idea about the
differences between the two major political parties, but little beyond a
generalization about an issue or two on which the parties differ, such as
abortion or spending on education and health care. And finally, you almost
certainly are less than fully aware of the many ways in which government shapes
your daily life and your chances in life.
For
over a decade I and my colleagues gave students a 63 question general knowledge
test on the first day of class. The average score on the first day was just
over 13 correct answers, a score of 21%. Not very good! The material in this
text is designed to improve your factual knowledge.
Do
you need to know most of these facts? Yes! You can no more understand American
politics without some basic factual knowledge than you can understand
basketball without understanding the “screen and roll” or music without
understanding the difference between treble and bass, or fashion without
knowing basic color combinations.
Moreover,
these facts are not just formal rules and powers, like you may have learned in
a history or civics class. They include principles that help you understand
events. They include relationships between government and your daily life. They
include strategies and behaviors that can help you influence what government
does and does not do.
Fourth,
the text will not use many current events to illustrate ideas. The events we
will use are those that are important enough to be included in texts for many
editions. Not including a lot of current events is unusual for a text. Authors
typically add current events to illustrate basic themes, concepts, and
principles, and then update them every couple of years in a new edition. Of
course these frequent new editions drive up the cost of books. Sadly these
current events quickly become outdated, sometimes as soon as the text is
published. My goal is to write a text that can stand for more than a couple of
years without much updating.
Not
including current events also keeps the text shorter. A short text is good for
a couple of reasons. Most college students have a lot of demands on them and
not much time. So less to read is good from the student’s point of view! A
short text also gives you some extra time to read current news reports in
newspapers or on the web (something that you really need to do regularly to be
an active citizen) and learn about events that are really current. The ideas,
concepts, and principles in the text should help you make sense of whatever the
current events are in the news. News stories should begin to fit together in
your mind as part of a broad picture of American government and politics. That
understanding should last well beyond this course and help you play the role of
an active member of our democratic republic.
Fifth,
a unifying theme—the major hook—of the text is the idea that much of the
difficulty in understanding American government and politics rests on the paradoxical
nature of our political system. You may not know what that means right now,
but it should become clear as we proceed. For now, let’s just say that a paradox
is a kind of contradiction that has some truth on both sides. Every
chapter will have some paradoxes for you to consider. For example, the old
popular quotation that a “government governs best when it governs least” is a
kind of paradox.
A
long time ago as a young political science professor, I had to teach an
introduction to political philosophy course. The text I used was based on the
idea that most important philosophical questions involved paradoxes. Half the
intellectual battle was trying to understand the nature of each paradox. For
example, “ignorance may be bliss,” but at the same time “an unexamined life is
not worth living.” You cannot resolve that paradox until you understand what
both sides of that paradox involve.
So
it will be in this text. For example, we can’t resolve the paradox of
presidential power until we understand both the great powers a president has
and the great limits on those powers.
Finally,
we will use principles in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and from the
discipline of political science to help us understand American government and
what we as citizens can do. Let’s briefly preview how each one is built into
this text.
The
Constitution lays out the basic framework and rules for how our government
operates. You must know the rules to understand the game. But the Constitution
was also a political document that left a lot undefined and papered over many
conflicts with compromises and general language. Why? Because those who wrote
it had to do what was necessary to get it accepted by people with deep
disagreements.
This
fundamental fact about the Constitution makes it difficult to interpret. How it
is interpreted and applied touches virtually every aspect of American politics
today. Therefore, the Constitution will touch every chapter in the text. We
will organize the text by the organization of the Constitution, covering topics
in the same order in which they are covered in the Constitution.
The
Federalist Papers were a set of essays written by supporters
of the Constitution (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay)
during the battle to ratify it in 1787-1788. Those who favored ratification of
the Constitution circulated the essays around the states and printed them in
newspapers. They were put together in a book and collectively are called the Federalist
Papers because those who supported the Constitution were calling for a federal
union of the states as laid out in the Constitution. We will define the term
“federal” later in this chapter and have a detailed chapter about federalism
later in the text. The essays were arguments in favor of the nature of the
proposed new union among the states.
Today
we can read the papers and see what the supporters of the Constitution had in
mind. Courts still cite the papers when interpreting the Constitution. The
language is hard to understand because it is highly formal with long difficult
sentences using many words and phrases that we rarely use today. But the ideas
are still important. We will refer to the papers and the ideas in them fairly
frequently. Hopefully you will even make an effort to read one or two of the Federalist
Papers before the course is over.
Because this is a political science course, the text
will examine American Government through political science. Political
science is a social
science examining human behavior in the area of life we call politics, a
term we will define shortly. Political science is different than civics, which you may have studied in high
school. Civics focuses on rules and laws and structure. Political science goes
beyond this and looks at how people actually behave. The speed limit may be 65
mph, but people actually go much closer to 75, and police rarely stop someone
who is less than 10 mph over the limit. Civics would teach you the law, but
political science will examine unwritten rules of behavior that both police and
drivers follow. You almost certainly know the unwritten rules about speeding.
We will cover a lot of unwritten rules political scientists have found. If
political science is worth anything, understanding those rules will help you
understand American politics as events unfold during your life. That is why
these unofficial and usually unwritten rules are critically important. Current
events change at a fast pace, but the rules and principles remain relatively
constant.
II. Some
Basic Terms and Ideas
Before
we get started in the details of each chapter, we need to cover a few basic
terms and ideas that are common to all the chapters.
A.
Republics and Democracies–The Question of Who Should Govern
The
title of this text, “A Republic If You Can Keep It,” is a quotation as
well as a title. Using a quotation for a title is unusual. The words are those
of Benjamin Franklin, the oldest delegate to the Constitutional Convention in
the summer of 1787 in
Benjamin Franklin, whose concern
about keeping the republic he and other Founders
created at the Constitutional
Convention inspired the title of this text:
A Republic, If You Can Keep It (image in public
domain)
I
chose these words for the main title for three reasons. First, the words
distinguish between the actual form of government we have—a republic—and the form
you probably think we have—a
democracy. Understanding the difference is fundamental to
understanding the nature of our system of government. People rule indirectly
through representatives in a republic. A republic is a
representative democracy. In a direct democracy, or just democracy, people
rule directly.
Second,
this difference raises the important question of who should rule. This
is a major question that all governments must decide. As we shall see, those
who wrote the Constitution (called the “Founding Fathers” or just the
“Founders”) did not trust average people enough to rule directly. So the
Founders gave average people relatively little political power. The Founders
equated democracy with mob rule and feared that a democracy would endanger
property and be highly unstable.
Down
through American history average people have gained more power. In many states
and local governments today, citizens have power to propose and pass laws
without actions by any legislative body (the initiative process).
Sometimes people even have the power to remove elected officials before
their terms are over (through a process called recall). States
routinely require that popular votes approve measures like amendments to the
state constitution. This is called a referendum,
which allows people to vote on something proposed by a legislative body.
By today’s standards, the Founders can be seen as having favored “elite rule,”
wanting only the better people to make laws. By “better,” they meant educated,
relatively successful and wealthy. We can also add white and male. Of course,
that’s who the Founders were—relatively successful educated white males!
Third,
the title of the text captures a central purpose for the text and most college
level American Government courses. We teach American government so that young
adults will have the necessary intellectual tools to be able to preserve it
(and hopefully improve it) for one more generation. That means each generation
must make the government work for them in the times in which they live. Old Ben
Franklin had it just right. If any single generation fails in this ongoing
task, our republic will be lost. His words are no less true today than they
were in 1787.
B.
Politics and Power—Personal and Public
Politics
is a word that we all use, and usually we mean something negative. When we say
that someone is being “political,” we usually are thinking about selfish and
insincere actions by unethical manipulative power hungry people. Not a pretty
picture.
I
am reminded of the old story told by a country sage who had a simple test to
see what a child would grow up to become. The test was to put a Bible and glass
of whiskey on a table. If the child picked up the Bible, the future was as a
preacher. If the child chose the whiskey, the future was as a drunk. And if the
child picked up both, waved the Bible, and then drank the whiskey, the child
would be a politician!
While
this negative stereotype certainly contains some truth, it oversimplifies
reality, as do all stereotypes. Politics and power, like many things in life,
can be used for good and/or ill. Perhaps we should define both politics and
power before going any further.
Political
scientists have many definitions of politics. Some come from
politicians, like President Lyndon Johnson, who said that politics is the “art
of the possible.” Not a bad definition, because politics does involve
creatively figuring out how you can get the most of some goal. This suggests
compromise between what you may want ideally and what is possible practically.
It suggests a process in which you work with others and try to influence them
in some way using a wide range of tools. It also suggests that to be successful
you have to be creative. Johnson was quite good at influencing and often
intimidating people to accomplish as much as possible. He was especially good
at this when he was Majority Leader in the Senate. He was good at this as
President up until his failure in Vietnam. If you saw the 2012 movie Lincoln, you should appreciate how
creative President Abraham Lincoln was in creatively finding ways to get as
much as he could—in that case the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Another
standard definition from a text I once used is that politics is the process
of influencing government policy. People do many things to influence what
government does and does not do. We shall certainly talk about many of these
things throughout this text—including things that you must do to get government
to work for you.
Both
of these definitions imply that people employ tools and techniques to
accomplish goals. Those tools and techniques can be thought of as power. A
third definition links politics and power directly to each other, that politics
is the use of power and what the powerful do.
If
you think about this simple broad definition of politics as the use of power,
you may see that politics is not just what people do with respect to
government—the public realm. People also engage in politics privately in
dealing with each other in personal relationships and in business.
Certainly power relationships exist among friends, in families, in religious
institutions, and in job situations. In fact, politics in this sense is
universal. That is why Aristotle, the ancient political philosopher,
observed that “man is by nature a political animal.”
So
if politics, both public and private, involves power, what exactly is power?
Political scientists sometimes say that power has two faces. The first
face is the most obvious, getting someone to do something that they would
not otherwise ordinarily do. This kind of behavior is easy to observe and
study as a social scientist, because people actually do things that can then be
observed and measured.
The two faces of power
may be thought
of as a traffic cop who
can make you go
or stop you from going
(public domain).
The
second face is less obvious. Power can also be preventing people from doing
things that they might otherwise ordinarily do. This is harder to study
because nothing exists to directly observe. This kind of power can only be
indirectly studied by carefully evaluating social and cultural surroundings,
and looking for pressures that restrain people. In a classroom pressure might
come from a teacher whose body language intimidates students from speaking out.
In the workplace it could be fear of losing ones job or being given unpleasant
tasks. In a society, it could be negative stereotypes of some group that
prevents them from fully participating in public life or even admitting
membership in some group. Note that these examples move from the interpersonal
and private to the public realm.
You
might consider how power affects you in the private and public groups in which
you are a member. Do you feel empowered or restrained? Are you afraid to speak
up? Do you feel respected? What exactly about the culture and values and
actions in the group makes you feel this way?
Americans
are ambivalent about power. By “ambivalent,” I mean that we respect power and
have a great deal of interest in those who have power. But we also say that we
fear power and what it can do. We often claim we do not want power because of
those fears. One favorite quotation that most Americans believe is that “power
corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
This
discussion of power takes us to a paradox, the paradox of power. Power
is both good and bad. That much is certainly true. But because of our
ambivalent feelings about power, we have a closely related paradox about
getting power in a culture that fears power: you get power by saying that
you do not want power. We usually distrust anyone who says they want power.
Yet people must get power to accomplish goals.
You
can see how these cultural attitudes about power make life difficult for
politicians seeking power. Politicians seeking power must pretend they do not
want power, and so they often seem insincere. They must pretend not to be
politicians. Think about this the next time you hear someone accusing a
politician of being political or power-hungry, or a politician saying that she
or he is not an insider or professional politician or part of the problem in
Washington.
C.
Government
Government is a little easier to define. It is
an institution that makes decisions about the policies. Policies come in
two broad varieties, domestic and foreign. Foreign policies are about how we
will relate to other nations economically, culturally and in terms of security.
Domestic
policy refers to actions that reward some people and/or deprive others through
social and economic actions or inactions. Governments provide services to some
and impose taxes to pay for these services. Or it may lower taxes for some and
reduce services, which is what we have seen at the state level with tax cuts
and lower funding of higher education that results in your paying higher
tuition. Government passes laws that treat certain behaviors as criminal and
deprive people of their freedom or even lives for breaking these laws.
Governments pass regulations that allow and disallow actions by people in how
they use their property (for example, building a fence of a certain height in
front of your house or opening a home business with a sign advertising that
business) or how businesses and professionals operate (for example fair lending
laws or licensing doctors and lawyers). Government attempts to influence the
economy through fiscal policy (taxing and spending) and monetary policy
(interest rates, bank regulations and money supply). Government sometimes gives
direct subsidies to private institutions like banks or major corporations in
times of financial crises, as it did in the near banking collapse of the 2007-8 Great Recession when it bailed out banks and
rescued General Motors and Chrysler.
President Obama driving a Chevy
Volt while touring GM plant in 2010
(White House photo, public domain)
D.
Ideology and Party
Ideology
and political parties are different concepts. But they are also related to each
other. In recent years they have become more closely related. Students almost
always confuse them with each other. We will define each of them to see how
they are different and briefly discuss how they are related. We will go into
much more detail on political parties later in the text. Ideology will arise in
many places throughout the text.
Ideology generally refers to the beliefs
people have to what government should do. We will start with a broad
generalization involving two kinds of ideology and then move to a more
complicated set of beliefs that involve four kinds of ideology.
Most
broadly, ideology refers to how active government should be. Liberals generally
want a more active government. This is because liberals have a greater faith in
the ability of people to come together and collectively decide how to improve
society. So liberals are generally associated with a willingness to change and
try new things.
Most
broadly, conservatives have less trust in human beings to bring about positive
change. They feel that social institutions developed as they did for reasons beyond
the understanding of people, and any effort to change very much will usually
make things worse. Thus conservatives generally want less government action to
change society and want to rely more on private initiative and voluntary
action. They prefer to leave traditional ways of doing things alone.
Now
let’s be a little more precise. Neither of these broad generalizations is
universally true. Sometimes we see the opposite of what we would expect. In
some areas of life, those who call themselves conservatives advocate more
government action, like placing restrictions on abortion. And in other areas of
life those who call themselves liberal want less government action, like
letting any two adults to get married regardless of sexual preference.
This
observation suggests that we can improve the way we define ideology by dividing
life into two realms, the economic realm and the private moral realm. This
gives us four possibilities: government action in both, action in neither,
action in economic but not the private, and action in the private but not the
economic.
Let’s
look at each possibility. Each has its own label. (Though these terms are
universally used in political science, I should give credit for this four part
typology to the authors of an excellent text I once used, Gitelson,
Alan R., Robert L. Dudley, and Melvin J. Dubnick, American
Government,
1. Populists: Action in Both
the Economic and Private Areas
Of
the four labels, the label “populist” is probably the most confusing because
the label is used in different ways. Populists generally appeal to popular mass
sentiments for widespread government action in all areas. In the late 1800s a
political party used the name Populist, and what that party stood for does fit
this ideological category. The most well known Populist Party candidate,
William Jennings Bryan, supported government action to enforce codes of
personal morality and government action in the economic realm to help
struggling small farmers of that time.
Today,
African-Americans are the largest group who generally holds views that might be
called populist. They tend to want government to enforce religiously based
standards of morality and at the same time help those who face economic
hardship. But few African-Americans would recognize or adopt the populist
label.
In
the media, journalists use the populist label in a more general way. They apply
it to politicians who try to generate mass appeal, regardless of the role
advocated for government. This common practice confuses the meaning of the
term. So politicians with rather opposite beliefs get called populists. For
example, sometimes President Reagan and President Clinton were both called
populists because of their popular appeal. In fact, using the definitions of
ideology in this section, Reagan was really a conservative and Clinton a
liberal.
2. Libertarians: Action in
Neither Area
Libertarians
are much easier to find today. We have had and continue to have a political
party by that name which almost perfectly fits the ideological framework. The
Libertarian Party is active in all states and always runs a candidate for
president.
What
do libertarians believe? They believe in minimal government action in all areas
of life. They prefer private certification to government licensing in the
professions and in the areas of safety. So foods and meats would not be
government inspected. Instead, they might be certified by private entities.
Those who sold these goods could use that certification as part of their
advertising. Whether any of this happens is up to the private market. The same
would be true of doctors and lawyers and so on. Libertarians want minimal
government regulation of business and enterprise, wanting little more from
government than enforcement of contracts through the courts. Many would even
oppose public education, believing that people should provide that for
themselves. Others might support vouchers for education with parents choosing among
competing private school systems for their children’s education. Libertarians
would oppose all drug laws except those that keep people safe from those under
the influence. Many even oppose prohibitions on prostitution, believing that
what takes place among consenting adults is their own business.
In
addition to an organized Libertarian Party, the Republican Party has a faction
that is libertarian in nature. Republican Ron Paul and his supporters are an
example. They generally oppose government action, but not as much as pure
libertarians. This faction of the Republican Party often has conflicts with the
social conservatives in the party, whom we shall describe below.
3. Liberals: Action in the
Economic Area but Not in the Private
Liberals
generally support government action to help the disadvantaged in such areas as
education, health care, job training, and discrimination. Liberals support
economic regulations on business, environmental regulations, and government
action to slow global warming.
On
the other hand, like libertarians, liberals oppose government action to enforce
codes of morality that do not involve behavior that clearly harms others. So
while liberals would restrict smoking in public places because of concern for
second hand smoke, they would probably oppose restrictions on the private use
of marijuana and almost certainly oppose restrictions on its private medical
use. They see abortion as a private matter of choice for the woman in
consultation with her doctor, not as an action that involves harm to another
human being. Of course all this rests on when the fetus begins to have separate
rights as a human being. While some liberals might privately oppose abortion
for themselves, they do not want government forcing that standard of morality
on others. As you can see, this is far more complicated and nuanced (look
up this word if you do not know it!) than pro-abortion versus pro-life.
Liberals
generally gravitate to the Democratic Party. However, a few northern and
western Republicans still agree with some liberal values. This would be
especially true in such issue areas as environmental protection, gay rights,
and abortion. A California Republican who is seen as conservative might be far
more liberal than a Democrat in Georgia or
4. Conservatives: Action in
the Private Area But Not the Economic
These
people are often called “social conservatives,” which is perhaps a more
accurate term. These conservatives wish to have an activist government in
defining marriage, in prohibiting abortion, in prohibiting the use of drugs, in
outlawing gambling, having “blue laws” prohibiting Sunday sales, and a range of
other areas of life that could be seen as involving private moral behavior. Of
course, they would dispute the claim that these behaviors are purely private.
They see most of these actions as harming other people. Many of these beliefs
are based on religious values.
Most
conservatives find their home in the Republican Party. However, some Democrats,
especially African-American Democrats and Hispanics, hold most of these values
and are also members of evangelical and fundamentalist religious institutions.
Figure 1. Four Ideological
Groups on a horizontal plane of government activity in Economic Areas of life
and a vertical plane of government activity in Private Areas of life
|
Populists: Government is Active in Economic
area Active in Private
area |
Conservatives: Government is NOT active in
Economic area Active in Private
area |
|
Liberals: Government is Active in Economic
area NOT Active in
private area |
Libertarians: Government
is NOT
active in Economic area NOT
Active in private area |
As
you can see in reviewing these labels and value positions, these four ideological
groups are related to the two major parties. However, enough overlap exists so
that one would be wrong to say, as many people do, that all Democrats are
liberals and all Republicans are conservatives. Many Republicans are
libertarian, a few are liberal, and some even populist. Many Democrats,
especially religious minorities, are more populist
than liberal. About the best generalization one can make is that Republicans tend
to be conservative or libertarian while Democrats tend to be liberal
or populist.
In recent decades the relationship between
ideology and party identification has grown stronger. Former conservative
white southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party. Less conservative
northern and western Republicans no longer felt welcome in a party that took
very conservative and uncompromising positions on social issues like abortion
and gay rights. This is what observers mean when they say that partisan polarization has increased in
the nation. As each of the two major
parties became filled with relatively more people with a single ideology,
compromise with the other side became more difficult.
Nevertheless,
because many more people are familiar with party labels than with ideological
labels and because many people have a broad collection of issue positions along
with a party label that ideology cannot fully explain, we should be very
careful in using just ideology to distinguish who supports which political
party. For example, I know quite a few students who take quite liberal positions
on a range of issues, yet consider themselves to be strong Republicans because
of a few other issues or because of family influence. In addition, about a
third of the population claims to be independent, or at most have a very weak
party attachment. Their positions are even less understandable in terms of
ideology.
Political
scientists have studied ideology quite a bit. They have found that while most
people use the terms liberal or conservative and even put themselves into one
group or another, many are confused about what the terms mean and hold issue
positions that are only roughly consistent with the terms.
You
might consider your own understanding of ideology. How do you define it? Do you
use ideology to help you sort out where and when government should act? Do you
fit into one of these four categories? Or do you have some unique collection of
views with no obvious principles to explain or connect them? Perhaps you just
collected views handed you by parents and others who have had an influence on
your life. Thinking about how you think about political positions might be a
useful writing exercise.
E.
Federalism—What Level of Government Should Have Power
Almost
every nation-state has different levels or layers of government. Only very tiny
nations can operate with just one level of government. Below a central national
government are some kind of regional governments. And
below regional governments are some kind of local
governments.
Regional
governments go by a variety of names. Sometimes the regional governments are
called provinces, like in
The
unitary system centers all power in the central government. It
stresses uniformity and works best where people have similar views and customs
throughout the country. Many European countries employ this option. The central
government can, however, grant powers to regional governments and allow them to
make a lot of decisions for themselves. But at the same time the central
government can also take away those powers. For example, in
The
opposite extreme is a confederal system. In this system the power is
centered in the regional governments and the central government can only do
those things that the regional governments allow it to do. Because this
arrangement makes national actions slow and difficult, it is relatively rare in
the modern world. It was the system we had under the Articles of Confederation,
which operated between the end of the Revolutionary War and the adoption of the
existing Constitution in 1788. We will have more to say about the Articles of
Confederation in the chapter on the Constitution. A confederal system is also
the system that the Confederate States had in the American South during the
Civil War in the early 1860s. The United Nations can be seen as a kind of confederal
system. The U.N. can only do those things that the member states, in
particular, the members of the Security Council and the “perm five” member
states in the Council, agree to allow it to do. A confederal system is about
the best one can do when member states do not want to give up much power and do
not want some central authority dictating things.
What
we have in the United States is an American invention. It was created under the
Constitution written in 1787. It is a compromise between the two polar
opposites of the unitary and confederal forms. It is a federal system.
In a federal system the regional governments, or states, have reserved some
powers for themselves, the central or national government has some powers, and
both share some powers.
Figure 2. What Level of
Government Has Power and Problems
|
Type: |
Confederal |
Federal |
Unitary |
|
Power: |
Regional
governments |
Shared |
Central Government |
|
Problems: |
·
Internal conflicts among regions ·
Economic chaos ·
Inability to defend nation |
·
Political struggle over what level does
what |
·
Regional differences may get ignored ·
Unwise national policy hurts entire nation |
Sadly
for you as a student, a federal system is the most complex kind of system to
understand. But if you are to play an active role, understand it you must. As
we shall see in the chapter on federalism, this complex relationship has
created a lot of confusion and conflict throughout our history. Levels of
government struggle over the question of which level is responsible to do what
on virtually every political question we have faced: racial and gender
equality, marriage, environmental protection, workplace safety, standards for
drivers’ licenses, immigration enforcement, drug laws, health insurance, and
even the deployment and support of National Guard troops. That is just a start.
The list is as endless as the possibilities for what government could do.
III. Plan of
the Text–-Chapter Organization
The
organization of the Constitution serves as the major organizing principle for
this text. So we will start with a chapter on the Constitution. We will focus
on why and how it was written, and look at the long list of compromises that
were necessary to get it adopted.
Then
we shall turn to the legislative branch, the subject of Article I in the
Constitution. That is the longest article in the Constitution, the one that
gives the most detail on how a branch is organized and what it can and cannot
do.
Article
II is about the executive branch, which might be seen as having two parts, the
office of the president and the executive bureaucracy. So we will have two
chapters on this article, Chapter 4 on the executive and Chapter 5 on the
bureaucracy.
Chapter
6 focuses on the judicial branch, which is created in bare bones form in Article
III. This is one of the shortest articles in the Constitution.
Article
IV covers relationships among states and between the states and the national
government. This complex and evolving set of relationships is what we call
federalism, which we just defined a few paragraphs ago. So Chapter 7 will cover
federalism.
Constitutional
Articles V (the amendment process), VI (a very short miscellaneous kind of
article covering debts, the supremacy of the national government, oaths of
office and prohibiting any religious test for office), and VII (specifying what
was necessary for ratification to put the Constitution into effect) are covered
elsewhere in the text. They do not have enough material in them to merit a
separate chapter.
Many
of the amendments, certainly including the Bill of Rights, are about expanding
civil liberties and rights. Therefore Chapter 8 is about civil rights and
liberties.
Having
covered the major articles and the amendments, we have run out of Constitution.
Nevertheless, several subjects remain that need to be covered in order to
understand how American government actually works. These include important
groups and processes, and the policies that government produces. So in Chapter
9 we will look at interest groups, what the Founders called “factions.” The
Founders did not like factions any more than Americans today like interest
groups. The problem the Founders faced was how to control them without reducing
freedom of people to create groups to pursue political goals. We continue to
struggle with that problem. Interest groups are so central to the operation of
American government today that one cannot understand how American politics
operates without understanding how interest groups operate. And if you want to
influence government, understanding interest groups is a must.
Chapter
10 examines another kind of group that Americans also generally dislike,
political parties, and also the process that most concerns political parties,
elections. The Founders hoped we could operate without political parties, which
they also lumped in with the idea of factions. But parties proved necessary in
the organization of elections back then. They still do today. So we will also
examine elections in this chapter. We will pay particular attention to election
rules and to the question of citizen participation in elections. Rules are very
important, and they vary a great deal across different kinds of elections and
across the states. This variation reflects our federal system. Voting is
central to elections. Voting can be seen as a question—to vote or not to vote.
On the one hand, voting participation is critical to our keeping our democratic
republic. But on the other hand, voting is an irrational act in terms of the
time and trouble required. This poses another paradox we will examine in that
chapter: the survival of a democratic republic requires citizens to act
irrationally.
Chapter
11 examines public opinion, political socialization, and the media. Political
socialization refers to the process by which we get our political opinions and
identifications. The media have a great influence on what we know about the
world, and the computer age is bringing about a revolution in how we get
information and the amount of available information and misinformation. In a
democratic republic politicians must pay attention to what the public wants, or
else they will not stay in office for long. But the public is ill-informed on
most issues. So the paradox that political leaders face every day involves
respecting and honoring a public that is usually ignorant on most issues. This
involves some delicate balancing.
IV. Policy
and the Text—Health Care
A.
Policy
and the Text
Almost
all American government texts end with several chapters on the product of
government activity—public policy. Often texts have a chapter on economic
policy, a chapter on social welfare policy, and often a chapter on foreign
policy. Longer texts may have additional chapters on education policy or
environmental policy. This text will cover public policy differently. Rather
than put policy off until the end of the text in separate chapters, we will
cover various policies in the middle of chapters to illustrate points and at
the ends of several chapters in sections called “policy implications.”
I
chose to integrate policy into many chapters for several reasons. I want to
encourage you to think about what government does as you are considering the
various parts and processes of our government. Second, because keeping up with
current events is a central part of what we will be doing every day and because
many news stories are about government policies, thinking about policy
throughout the course fits the goal of daily news consumption. Finally, because
policies are changing all the time, relying on the news rather than the text to
cover the latest wrinkles in policies helps prevent the text from going out of
date so quickly. So our focus in the “policy implications” sections will be
more about long term historical changes and forces that shape policies than
current policy content.
B.
Health
Care Policy
We
are in the middle of a very important step in a long term historical change in
health care policy. So we will talk about that policy now. It illustrates many
of the ideas in this introductory chapter: living in the republic rather than a
democracy, ideological differences, the two faces of power, and federalism.
The
struggle to provide universal health insurance has been an ongoing story since
the early 1900s when Republican Teddy Roosevelt argued for universal health
care. If majority opinion was all that’s required to pass a policy, we would
have had universal health care long ago, because popular majorities have
favored universal care since the early 1900s. But we do not have a democracy
where public opinion directly determines government policy. Rather we have a
republic where the link between opinion and policy is indirect and much less
certain. Political leaders have to be political—they have to practice
the “art of the possible” to bring about change.
Government
guaranteeing access to health care was not possible for a long time. Franklin
Roosevelt decided that it was too difficult. Interests that preferred that
status quo, which included doctors and hospitals who feared government control
of prices, were adept in the exercising the second face of power, preventing
things from happening that might otherwise have happened.
Nevertheless,
government policy did indirectly encourage expanded access during the Roosevelt
years. Many workers began to receive health insurance through employment. This
was an historical fluke that happened during WWII. Wages were frozen as part of the government
war effort. But government allowed companies to add health benefits to attract
workers. Companies needing workers did this, and the practice has continued.
While many workers were covered in this arrangement, the poor, the elderly, the
unemployed, and many self-employed, were simply not covered, unless they could
afford their own individual policies. Most could not.
After
many failed starts, the first major change in the direction of direct
government involvement took place in 1965 following Lyndon Johnson’s 1964
landslide election that gave the Democrats large majorities in both houses of
Congress. Johnson had enough supporters in Congress with liberal and populist
ideological beliefs about what government should do to bring about change. This
included mostly Democrats but also significant number of Republicans who were
not as conservative as most Republicans are today. With Johnson’s skills at the
“art of the possible,” Congress passed Medicare, which covering the elderly,
and Medicaid, which covering the poor.
The
1960s reforms still left many uncovered, and their numbers grew. The unique American
arrangement of health insurance through employers was under increasing pressure
as health care costs rose with new health technology and increasing longevity
and as companies tried to trim employment costs to be competitive in a global
market. Companies in most nations were not burdened with health care
plans. In 1994 President Clinton tried
to expand coverage, but the effort failed. He did not have the majorities he
needed in Congress.
President
Obama promised to address the problem after his election in 2008. He did, but
with great difficulty and at great political cost. He did not get all that he
wanted, but he got about as much as he could—again illustrating
the art of the possible. The process of getting there had to overcome several
challenges. Conservatives and libertarians, who comprised nearly all
Republicans, bitterly opposed more government action in health care. Using
every procedural ploy possible, Obama and Democratic majorities in the House
and Senate passed the Affordable Care
Act in 2010 (popularly called “Obamacare”).
President Obama
signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on
March 23, 2010 (photo
by Keith Ellison, Creative Commons)
A
majority of the public wanted more access to health care and liked parts of the
plan, such as extending coverage to children up to the age of 26, doing away
with lifetime benefit limits, and prohibiting insurance companies from denying
coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. But a majority opposed the
“individual mandate” that required everyone who could afford to do so to buy
health insurance (excluding those who had insurance through employment and
those on Medicare or Medicaid). In fact, the mandate was necessary to pay for
the things that the public did like. Without a mandate, people would buy
insurance only when they were sick. That would make insurance unaffordable.
Those
interests opposed to the new law challenged it in court. In a landmark
decision, National Federation of
Independent Business et al v. Sebelius, Secretary of
Health and Human Services (2011), the Supreme Court narrowly ruled most of
the law to be constitutional under the taxing powers of the national
government. We will discuss this case in more detail later in the text. Though
the law was upheld, the political battle continued.
Popular
opposition to the mandate provision had already hurt the Democrats in the 2010
congressional election. Exploiting this opposition, Republicans took over the
House and narrowed the majority Democrats had in the Senate. Republicans hoped
that continued popular opposition to the mandate would enable them to win both
the White House and Senate in 2012. A promise to repeal the law became a
centerpiece of their 2012 campaign. But public opinion had changed. A clear
majority no longer simply wanted to repeal the law. For this and a variety of
other reasons, including Obama’s political skill, he survived. The Democrats
narrowed the Republican majority in the House and widened their majority in the
Senate.
But
again, the battle was not over. Implementing a policy in a federal system often
requires cooperation of state governments. The Affordable Care Act had included
greatly expanding Medicaid to cover more poor people who could not afford to
buy insurance in the insurance pools that states were to set up for consumers.
The 2011 Supreme Court decision undercut this Medicaid expansion by ruling that
states could opt out of the expansion. Moreover, only about half the states
were setting up insurance pools from which those who could afford insurance
could buy a policy. As of this writing, the national government is setting up
many of these pools. Evolving health care policy illustrates the complex
relationship between national and state actions in our federal system.
Health
care policy also illustrates many of the other topics in this text: interest
group action, political parties, constitutional checks and balances, the
congressional law making process, the dynamics of shifting public opinion, and
the operation of bureaucracy. We can add deficits, taxing, and spending to the
list because health care is a major portion of the national budget.
V. Final
Introductory Comments
Each
chapter begins with a detailed outline that provides an overview of the
chapter. The body of the text is the outline again with the text filled in.
Students tell me that this organization helps them in their reading and
understanding. In the text I have bold faced key terms and ideas, which
I repeat following the text. Quite often I will underline simple
definitions. You should have already noticed the bold faced terms and ideas in
this introduction. Some ideas are repeated in more than one chapter, which is
okay because they relate to more than one topic. Moreover, repetition and
reinforcement help people learn.
I
want to thank the
Despite
all this excellent help, the text will have errors and shortcomings. These are
mine and mine alone. If you find errors, please let me know by email at bobb@usca.edu. Suggestions are also welcome,
though I make no promises to follow them. One of the very nice things about an e-text
is that unlike paper texts, errors can be quickly corrected.
KEY TERMS
AND IDEAS
paradox
Federalist
Papers
political science
civics
republic
democracy
initiative process
recall
referendum
politics
Aristotle
power
paradox of power
government
ideology
populists
libertarians
liberals
conservatives
partisan polarization
unitary system
confederal system
federal system
the Affordable Care Act of 2010
Possible
Web Exercises
1. Find the names
of your member of Congress and your two United States Senators, if you do not
already know them. Then find the names of your state legislator and your
state senator (using your home address). Students often confuse state
legislators with national legislators, just like they confuse their state
legislature with the Congress.
2. Political
scientists have developed much more complex ideological schemes than the one
presented in this chapter. You can find one at the
3. Here is a
simpler quiz asking 20 questions that uses the four same terms to those I used
in the chapter (liberal, populist, libertarian, conservative) plus socialist
(which seems to be an extreme version of what we called liberal) and moderate
or centrist (whatever ideological type) (which seems to indicate weaker
versions of liberals, conservatives, libertarians, or populists). More
questions in more issue areas would be better, but these 20 questions do cover
a pretty good range of issues. What this suggests is that while we can have
pure types, most people are colorations of these pure types that vary with the
set of issues in question. http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=Politicalideas.