A ‘moderate’ filibuster? Killing it would still be better
West Virginia’s Joe Manchin set some hearts aflutter over the weekend when he went on the TV talk shows to say he’s open to reforming the Senate filibuster by at least making it more difficult to conduct one. One presumes he has in mind the climactic scene in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” when Jimmy Stewart successfully held the floor of the U.S. Senate all by himself causing his guilt-ridden nemesis to eventually confess wrongdoing. Senate filibusters aren’t conducted like around-the-clock marathons anymore, and that was a movie. It was, for lack of a better word, fake. We feel obligated to remind Senator Manchin of this because there seems to be a fiction that the filibuster makes the U.S. Senate a better, more honest, less corruptible place. Oh, if only it were so.
That Senator Manchin has such extraordinary power in his hands — the ability to set Senate rules — is bad enough. The 73-year-old Democrat was last reelected to office in 2018 with a total of 290,510 votes. Joe Biden won more than 81 million votes just four months ago. Yet it’s Mr. Manchin who seems in control of the nation’s agenda. Never mind the president’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is set to receive final passage in the House on Wednesday despite GOP opposition. That was made possible by an atypical parliamentary procedure known as budget reconciliation that only requires a majority vote in the Senate. The Democrats won’t have that weapon when other controversial matters like addressing police mistreatment of minorities to election reform come before the body in the days ahead. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he intends to filibuster them all, which means Mr. Biden would need to find 10 Republicans to win favor. Good luck with that.
President Biden has expressed a willingness to compromise. That’s commendable. But when was the last time meaningful yet controversial legislation escaped the Senate with a 60-vote margin? The CARES Act passed the Senate unanimously at the scariest moment of the pandemic last year, so that hardly counts. In reality, the filibuster is an archaic rule that was designed to keep the minority from getting run over and instead has thwarted the majority in a ridiculous way. It was one thing when states were similar in population. In 1800, the most extreme example was how Virginia was 10 times the size of Delaware, but that was exceptional. In 2020, California is more than 66 times the size of Wyoming, and it’s not exceptional. The will of a majority of Americans may soon be thwarted because Republicans have disproportionate power through these lightly-populated rural states. Fixing that requires a constitutional amendment that won’t pass the Senate. Fixing the filibuster? That merely requires a majority vote to rewrite Senate Rule 22 so that a majority of senators present in the chamber can invoke cloture.
Filibusters used to be a rarity; now, they are common. It’s claimed they encourage bipartisanship but they haven’t. What
it causes is legislative paralysis. Granted, some politicians like that. They’ll soon talk about the Biden “failed” agenda to their constituents without bothering to mention how they contributed to its failure. And then they’ll run against the “D.C. establishment” without acknowledging their role in keeping the status quo. Americans didn’t elect Mr. Biden so that most of his proposals would be shelved by senators from small states. If Americans don’t like the Biden agenda, they can always dump members of Congress who supported it by means of the ballot box. With the filibuster, they’ll never get the chance. The Senate will block everything. Nobody wins. Not the Democrats, not the Republicans and certainly not the American people.
Bipartisanship is a noble goal. But it requires the so-called loyal opposition to have an agenda beyond partisan self-interest. Granted, there have been glimmers of hope such as when seven GOP senators voted to convict Donald Trump on the charge of incitement to insurrection last month. But that was truly exceptional and now they’re paying a steep political price, as most in their party continue to cower to the former president. There are the handful like, such as Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, who might be willing to negotiate. But winning over 10? Not this Senate, not this political environment with its tribal instincts. Senator Manchin is either delusional or simply likes playing power broker. So yes, we’ll take any filibuster reforms he’s offering, but this outdated, undemocratic rule ought to be scrapped entirely.
In our increasingly secular age, being on the side of science is similar to being on the side of God — a way to settle an argument by not actually making an argument. Just enlist an unassailable authority and move on.
That’s how Joe Biden campaigned for president, vowing to “follow the science” on the COVID-19 pandemic wherever it led him. Only now it seems like he’s leading the science as much as the science is leading him. And that was inevitable.
First, as with God, it’s sometimes difficult to know what science says.
This isn’t meant as an anti-science talking point. Science is good. Science is real. But science doesn’t speak on every issue with a booming voice that clears all doubts like a thunderclap scattering pigeons. Sometimes scientists — the high priests charged with telling us what science says — disagree with each other. (Priests also have their disagreements. You can look it up.)
And sometimes science gets things wrong. Phrenology — basically palm-reading applied to your skull — was briefly considered cutting-edge science. It’s now widely recognized as pseudoscientific quackery. Today’s “settled science” is often tomorrow’s “I can’t believe we said that.”
Then there are politicians. They rely on the experts. But they tend to rely on the experts who tell them what they want to hear or advise them how best to do what they already want to do. Liberal presidents rarely hire right-wing economists, and vice versa. This doesn’t mean anyone is necessarily acting in bad faith. It’s just how things tend to work.
There’s also the problem of scientists trying to think like politicians. In any given year, public health officials — at the CDC, NIH, etc. — issue all manner of advisories and guidelines. It’s important work. Doctors and local government officials heed this stuff. But you know who doesn’t? Most Americans.
In 2009, there was a major swine flu pandemic. Do you remember sitting on the edge of your seat for the latest CDC guidelines or advisories? You might if you had special health considerations or a job that required it. But for most people, such statements were the equivalent of the white noise Charlie Brown’s teachers would make in the old Peanuts cartoons.
The COVID-19 pandemic is different. The lives of Americans have been disrupted on a mass scale not seen since World War II. So everyone is paying attention. This must be a heady experience for many public health officials. If your normal experience involves desperately trying to get the attention of the public and the media, and suddenly you have the opposite problem — people hanging on your every utterance — you approach things differently. This isn’t a point about inflated egos or power going to anyone’s heads, though I think that would be a natural point to make (with some merit). Rather, it’s a point about a very real policy challenge.
For instance, last summer, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked by TheStreet. com why health officials had publicly downplayed the importance of masks given that the science is clear about their efficacy. He explained that masks were in “short supply,” and officials wanted to make sure there were enough for the health care workers who needed them most. It was a perfectly legitimate concern. It was also an admission of a lie.
One could argue it was a noble lie, but you can’t say the same about the Biden administration’s various equivocations, denials and misdirections on the issue of schools reopening.
Last month, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said science was on the side of kids going back to school as quickly as possible. The next day, the White House — no doubt chastened by teachers unions — walked that back. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Ms. Walensky was speaking in her “personal capacity.”
This week, the governors of Texas and Mississippi announced they were lifting lockdowns and mask mandates. I think that was a mistake, but not an outrageous or obvious one. Florida lifted such rules long ago, and it has performed better than California and New York. Mr. Biden called the decisions “Neanderthal thinking,” the insinuation being that he has a monopoly on the science.
He doesn’t. And even if the science is mostly on his side, politics is about more than following what scientists say. It’s about balancing competing notions of the public good. Science must have a voice in that conversation, but it’s just one of many.