The Supermajority Escalator

I have very rarely found plain, common sense in the years I've studied political science, especially in political theory. Several ideas are very logically based, but tend to be political pipedreams and, in my opinion, just partisan hopes and dreams based on party ideology. Bruce Ackerman, however, astonishes me with a very decent remedy to the current political and Constitutional crisis facing the United States today: The Supermajority Escalator. Something so simple, yet so effective I have not yet read in my life when it comes to dealing with a remedy to a situation like ours.

The idea of a sliding scale of political power was something we needed years ago to balance out the legislative and executive abuses occurring in the United States. Why didn't we hear of such an idea? As Ackerman notes several times, the executive doesnt want to forfeit power. Combine this with the fear people had in the days following 9/11, and it made the executive the strong leader people wanted to rally behind. We are now 6 years removed from the tragedy that occurred on that fall morning, yet political power remained extremely dictatorial and emergency-based. With only a weak minority in the Congress, any attempts to override the executive and legislative actions were hopeless at best. This solution being offered gives hope to either party of being able to end a crisis and re-establish constitutional boundaries.

In addition to re-establishing the constitutional boundaries, I think its important to note that this style of emergency constitution gives the minority the right to report and give a measure of accountability to the majority party and its leaders for their actions. This type of check on government simply did not exist, which is why we currently have the government policing agencies on the defensive for overstepping boundaries. This is why we have an executive branch that is politically on shaky ground. This is why our Supreme Court is being thrust into the role of a permanent check that it should not be forced into doing, and this is why we dont have a sense of normalcy in government today. This type of accountability and difficulty of maintaining an emergency as is proposed by Ackerman is a cure for a system that ails us.

Will the system work, though? We don't know, but our current system has failed us. That seems good enough reason to at least work out a plan. After all, we may never see an end to terrorism, and worse yet, we may never see an end to the terrorism of our freedoms, values, and government that has existed for 6 years since the terrorism that shook us all to our cores.