The tussle between left-wing Democrats in the House and centrist Democrats in the Senate is an example of precisely how our government is supposed to work. The House, with its smaller districts and elections every two years, is the theater for popular passions, and the Senate, with its more exclusive membership and longer terms, is where popular passions go to cool off. The House is the accelerator, and the Senate is the brake. The demagogues and vulgar democrats are outraged: “Biden won the election,” they say, “so he should be able to have his agenda enacted.” But Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema won their elections, too. So did Mitch McConnell, who seems to be taking his ease for a moment as the Democrats joust with one another. We are one nation under God, not one nation under the president.
We do not have a hereditary monarch, as the British do, nor do we have an elected king, as some of our ancient forebears did. We do not have a king at all. Even in this degraded period of presidential idolatry and presidential caesaropapism, the American president is not a god-emperor — and he isn’t a gangster such as Putin or an autocratic party boss such as Xi, either. He is not the national lawgiver.
Our laws are instead made by an unruly assembly representing distinct and often rivalrous interests. It is because those interests really are distinct and rivalrous that we are always being lectured by presidents about “unity” and always being stampeded by politicians who insist that we are in a state of endless emergency — where there are many distinct interests, one must negotiate. Xi Jinping doesn’t negotiate with his subjects. Neither does Putin. It is very difficult to cure American presidents of their autocrat envy.
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