Half Changed World

So, a bipartisan group of senators, including Virginia’s John Warner, are announcing a compromise that will preserve the fillibuster.

Here’s the NY Times story, and the Washington Post story.  As might be predicted, bloggers on both the left and the right are screaming that their side caved.

Mark Schmidt had an interesting post this morning, arguing that a compromise would be a terrible outcome for Frist, but that a deal which allows Owen and Brown to go forward sets an extremely high standard for any future filibuster:

"That’s because in that combination, Brown or Owen would come to define the line of "extraordinary circumstances." That is, assume Brown goes through — after that, anyone with views less extreme than Brown would implicitly be considered not extraordinary. Bush could name Brown herself to the Court and Democrats would be paralyzed. And the problem with that is simply that there are no possible nominees to the Supreme Court whose views are more radical than Justice Brown."

I look forward to reading his comments tomorrow.

***

The best history of the fillibuster I’ve ever read is the opening chapters of the third volume of Robert Caro’s bio of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate.   Caro summarizes how the power of the filibuster meant that (except for a few years when Roosevelt was at the peak of his power) the Senate was where bills went to die.

The first two volumes of Caro’s biography paint a pretty bleak picture of LBJ, arguing (among other things) that he blatently stole at least one election.   But in this volume, Caro describes how Johnson, as Senate Majority Leader, used his power to set the calendar to bring rambunctious Senators into line, ruthlessly blocking their bills unless they voted as he wished.  And Caro makes the case for how Johnson, SOB that he certainly was, racist that he arguably was, out of his own selfish desire to be President, did more to advance the cause of civil rights in the US than all of the noble "liberal lions" who had fought for civil rights for decades.

It’s a long book, but it’s worth reading.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2005 at 9:19 pm and is filed under US Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.