A packed house in Vollum Hall listened to Ezra Klein lay many of the problems of the current American political system–at least in Washington DC–on the institution of the filibuster. Ezra hates the filibuster. He really hates the filibuster, although longtime readers probably already know this.
Much of his talk was a setup to this takeaway point. There was, for instance, a wonderful snippet of a letter written by Lyndon Johnson’s congressional liason regarding Medicare. Paraphrased: “We have 55 votes Mr. President; Medicare passage is assured.”
Today, you seemingly need 60 votes just to appoint a federal dog catcher, not to mention pass substantial legislation addressing global warming, a burgeoning federal budget deficit, or reform entitlements.
As Klein put it most effectively, I think, there is nothing wrong with empowering the minority to become the majority–a job description he attributed to Pete Sessions
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Image from the Wonkblog
. What is a problem is when you align the incentives for gridlock (via the filibuster) to the incentive to become the majority.
Ezra asked me at dinner what I, as a political scientist, thought of this talk. I was half honest with him. I liked it a lot as a teacher and community member. Anyone who heard the collective gasp when he showed a chart about filibusters in the modern Senate could not have been failed to be impressed.
But as a political scientist, I wanted to be challenged a bit more intellectually. Any of the students in my classes for the past five years have seen the Vote View graph about polarization and know about the explosion in filibusters. That’s why the collective gasp both impressed and depressed. Do citizens really not know this?
To Klein’s credit, he reminded me that not all political scientists agree that the filibuster is an archaic institution that should be abolished. I guess I just don’t travel in the right circles.
There was one more rather jarring moment that sticks with me. In response to a student’s question about working journalism, Klein gave an upbeat response about the job opportunities available in fast-paced media organizations like the Huffington Post and National Review.
But he did sound a bit like a young man in a hurry when he accused many of the journalists of an older generation of not working very hard. I’m not sure whether or not that is true, but it did sound a lot like the kind of thing you’d hear out of the Bain Capital version of Mitt Romney. Disruption good! Stability bad!
The old codger in me wonders whether Ezra will feel the same way when he’s 45 with children and a mortgage and a long list of books and long form columns to his credit, and is no longer interested in cranking out 30 or 40 short pieces a week.
Wouldn’t the best media universe have both? Of course, I still get the dead tree version of the NY Times on my doorstep everyday, so I’m obviously a dinosaur!