OUR REAL NATIONAL BUGABOO!

By Edwin Cooney

Say what you want or must about the archaic and undemocratic Electoral College, its failings are hardly at the center of the crisis we're facing this fall of 2023.

Many are convinced that abandonment of that 18th century document would go a long way toward strengthening democracy and allow you and me to be brothers and sisters once again! However, our national bugaboo is deeper, much deeper than the faults of the Electoral College!

For two and a half centuries, we've bragged to the world that our system of checks, balances, and tolerances, the gifts of the Constitution to our body politic, has made us a special people. What we've failed to acknowledge, especially to ourselves, however, are the methods all three branches of the government have devised to limit or control some of the benefits of a Democratic society.

Last Tuesday, October 3rd, a minority of Republican Representatives were able to unseat the Speaker of the House due to a rule or condition that barely passed last January justifying the election of Kevin McCarthy of California as Speaker. One of the options granted to each branch of Congress under Article I of the Constitution is the right to formulate rules governing the ways legislation might be adopted or rejected by the Congress of the United States. Generally, these rules have been designed to regulate or control rather than to advance options of a free people.

In the House, various sub-committees have been established to receive controversial proposals where they might die unnoticed by the public. Amendments may be added to the most popular bills to make them less effective than they might otherwise be. A bill might not be either passed or defeated but merely sent back to the House Rules Committee where it dies a natural death.

In the Senate, the most controversial rule is undoubtedly the filibuster designed to keep, usually, civil rights legislation from passage. Both parties over the years have attempted to manipulate the public's perception of the legitimacy of this powerful senatorial weapon.

The President also possesses a tool separating him or eventually her from being legally linked to the reputation of a controversial bill. It's called the Pocket Veto. If a bill is passed and the Congress adjourns for a vacation, all the President needs to do is not sign the bill thereby pocket vetoing a bill. He or she may give any number of reasons for not signing a bill: the bill needs amending or it breaks the year's budget etc.

Should the Electoral College be abandoned, I won't miss it, but it will reduce the influence of people living in small states such as Wyoming, Rhode Island, or Delaware. After all, they're free Americans, too, and their representatives must possess maximum authority in their representation.

Students of history today tend to condemn the "Founding Fathers" for their accommodation of slaveholding states in their 1787 union. However, one of the realities faced by the then existing national confederation was the tendency of the states to ally themselves with powerful European nations for their defense and marketing benefits. Northern states tended to favor Great Britain while southern states tended to ally themselves with France. These tendencies needed to be altered for the new nation's very security. Had there been no national unity created by accommodating the demands of southern states, relations between separate states would have endangered young America's national security.

States allying themselves with European powers would most likely have inherited the hostility suffered by European nations in relation to each other. We may have become like Europeans vulnerable to foreign attack and invasion.

Although America would have probably avoided the Civil War, it could have been endangered in World Wars I and II. Particularly, during World War II, the South might, due to kindred attitudes toward racial minority groups, have allied itself with Adolf Hitler.

To the degree that the Electoral College was a crucial part of our national togetherness in the 1780s, it must be acknowledged for the freedom and independence it brought about.

The Electoral College may indeed be archaic but it has, in this observer's opinion, brought a considerable stabilizing contribution to America's body politic.

Our national unity rather than our abandonment of the archaic Electoral College will be more vital to our ongoing safety and security.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY