Reply #48: My perspective differs. [View All]

[TahitiNut]

You make the (throw-away) claim that LBJ "should have been a Repub" - and I disagree. Let's first remember that LBJ parlayed his "southern Democrat" credentials to promulgate some of the most significant advances in human rights and civil liberties of the last century. It was this, probably more than anything else, that motivated the "southern strategy" of Nixon's campaign -- seeing an 'opportunity' to overcome the century-long aversion to the Republican Party (the party of Lincoln) in the south. Was the aggregate trade-off worth it? Many millions of citizens of this nation would probably say so. That every action is matched by an equal and opposite reaction is a theorem in Newtonian physics -- and possibly no less in Newtonian politics.

There are at play here, as I see it, two kinds of 'partisanship': the partisanship of elevated "loyalty" to political party and the partisanship of elevated "loyalty" to a branch of the federal government, or to the federal government itself. The Executive Branch is inherently (Constitutional "checks and balances") in a power struggle with both the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch. The "loyalty" to political party, when elevated above "loyalty" to both the nation and "loyalty" to branch of government, is the whip whereby Constituional checks and balances are gamed. When LBJ was in the Senate, he demonstrated an interparty branch loyalty somewhat above interbranch party loyalty, fairly diligently protecting and asserting the Legislative Branch's perquisites and powers. Not surprisingly, he demonstrated the same branch loyalty when part of the Executive Branch, both as Vice President and as President.

I bring this up because, as I see it, we're watching a Legislative Branch overpopulated with Senators and (more diversely) Representatives who seemingly place party loyalty above the presumed branch loyalty upon which Constituional checks and balances rest. When Congress effectively abdicates its Constitutionally exclusive powers to declare war, our nation is cast into the nightmare of foreign relations that the Framers, with abundant knowledge of the historical abuses of such Executive power, sought to preclude.

But moreover, there seems to be arising another kind of "loyalty" that we've seen become predominating only a few times in our nation's history: "class" (or wealth) loyalty. This 'loyalty' appears to muddle the ideological distinctions between parties and, almost as significantly, distinctions between branches of government.

Just my $0.03 (adjusted for inflation). :silly: