Chaos and the Goose

By Thomas Lamia

The first principles of America are in the Declaration of Independence: “. . . that all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, . . . Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  The form and structure of managing this pursuit of happiness and these rights to life and liberty are in the Constitution. Both documents are aspirational. Our founding principles and form of government require a watchful presence to defend what we declared to be rightfully ours in 1776 when we separated from a monarchy, in 1789  when we chose a form of government to build “a more perfect union”  and in 1863 when our president declared on the Gettysburg battlefield that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Today those principles and that form of government hang in the balance of politics.  Both the Republicans (who control all three branches of the federal government) and the Democrats are engaged in helter-skelter pursuits of ill-defined goals. Neither is a model for progress towards a solution to their respective forms of chaos. 

The Democrats have not yet organized around a plan to recover from their 2024 presidential loss. Despite a lot of handwringing and recriminations, no consensus in blame-placing or in message selection has surfaced. Losing candidate, Kamala Harris, has taken most of the punches and is now so battered as to be unsupportable for any future office, state or federal. Several ambitious pretenders are circling the field, each with stories to tell but none yet in the ring. There are too many to present a credible starting point for the emergence of a future winner. The organizing force of the Democratic National Committee appears disorganized, with indications of continuing hostilities between the Minnesota and Wisconsin party leaders who stood for election to the national top spot. Valuable fund-raising and messaging work is, I suspect, being lost in the infighting. No candidate of strength, charm and popular message is emerging. 

Helter-skelter chaos in the Republican federal government starts at the top, where the president’s style is to do everything, everywhere, all at once and leave bodies of exhausted and confused lieutenants and disciples strewn in his wake. Chaos is reflected in executive orders based on theories rather than established law, with related lawsuits filling the dockets of federal and state courts as the president tilts at personal windmills, using federal prosecutions and extortion to assist him.

This is an ugly picture. No winners, many losers. Nothing to be happy about for those pursuing happiness, and with real threats to life and liberty for those caught in the mix of resentment and retribution. 

We are on the verge of a historic seizure in the conduct of government. Congress is frozen in place with no capacity for either useful debate or bi-partisan voting majorities. Republicans must vote with the president or resign. The independence of Congress is being lost to presidential power. The Supreme Court is struggling to achieve popular support for politically sensitive decisions. Unless comity and statesmanship begin to emerge from what seems a reckless political morass, we risk killing the Golden Goose that has brought us 249 years of growth, prosperity and international admiration: our founding charter of freedom, individual liberty and democracy. 

Our status as the most envied and productive nation-state in the world is generally accepted by friends and enemies alike. Some claim our natural resources and productive land mass lying between ocean barriers, or some related quality of American exceptionalism, is responsible. Others see our institutions and the rule of law as the source. Yet others give credit to the military strength and fighting qualities of our people. All played a part but none were solely responsible. 

It is not mere speculation to look at each of our greatest existential crises (the Revolution, the inability of 13 former colonies to succeed without a central authority, the struggle over the drafting and acceptance of the Constitution, the economic and cultural differences between north and south, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, two world wars) and ask whether our experiment in democracy or the nation itself could have survived with another form of government.

 The fact that our people’s republic has survived many tests and become the envy of the world should be a springboard to continue that success, not a point of dispute among political parties. The motto: “Make America Great Again” is a negative concept. It implies a failure that must be corrected. The exact opposite is true.  Our history is the story of immigration and related government investments in people: land-grant colleges and universities; homesteading laws, a transcontinental railroad, an interstate highway system, government funding of scientific research. Our wealth, progress and personal security flow directly from the rule of law mandated by the Constitution, including the constitutions and laws of our 50 states. That is our system. The sanctity of contracts, due process of law, freedom from unlawful arrests and other basic personal rights, are products of that system. It works. It needs to be honored, not distorted or destroyed. Its three branches, created and governed by Articles I, II and III, are separate and equal, as they must be to prevent the autocracy of any one that would seek control over the others.