New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution.

• Author: Iwasaka, Ryan M.T.

New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution. By Alan Brinkley,(*) Nelson W. Polsby,(**) and Kathleen M. Sullivan.(***) New York: W. W. Norton Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 179. $13.95.

In the New Federalist Papers, Alan Brinkley, Nelson Polsby, and Kathleen Sullivan assume the modern day roles of Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison(1) to defend the U.S. Constitution from recent attacks by politicians and academic critics. Like their predecessors, Brinkley et al. fervently stand by the federal system established in 1789. Unlike their predecessors, Brinkley et al. do not argue for the ratification of a new constitution, but for the prevention of radical reforms to over two centuries of American constitutional law and structure.

The New Federalist Papers is an excellent critique of the current antifederalist challenge. By employing the rhetorical techniques of their predecessors,(2) Brinkley et al. effectively scrutinize the antifederalist arguments through factual and philosophical analysis. They equate the modern antifederalist challenge with the conservative agenda offered by the Republicans (p. 16),(3) beginning with President Reagan and continuing through the Contract with America. In New Federalist No. 2, for example, Brinkley notes:

One of the most striking developments of the last fifteen years has been

the growing power of a conservative opposition not just to particular public

programs, but also to the survival of the federal government as an

institution capable of playing a significant role in American life. The

aborted Republican revolution of 1995, and the Contract With America that

formed its basis, was the most visible evidence of this assault (p. 15).

Brinkley and his coauthors go on to provide detailed criticisms of several key components of the Contract with America and the Republican agenda.(4)

The New Federalist Papers, however, suffers from one major problem: The authors' ideological and somewhat partisan bent occasionally prevents them from seeing the full complexity of the problem they attempt to address. As a consequence, their analyses are incomplete, and their alternative solutions often appear just as ineffective as those of the new antifederalists. Brinkley et al. suffer from the same blinding passion that led their predecessors to conclude that the Supreme Court was the "least dangerous" branch of government,(5) and that states had little to fear from the intrusion of the federal government into their affairs.(6)

In making this argument, the authors appear to equate the Democrats with the original Federalists and the Republicans with the Antifederalists. In light of this construction, Brinkley et al. seem to conclude that to defend the Constitution they need only to attack the conservative antifederalist position and to offer minor adjustments to the status quo, which was forged during periods dominated by liberal Democrats, such as the New Deal and the civil rights era of the 1960s.(7) In fact, there is only one passage in the New Federalist Papers that truly places the blame for the antigovernment movement on both parties. Shedding his ideological blinders for a brief moment, Brinkley states in New Federalist No. 16:

The result [of the government's failure to respond properly to the internal

and external changes in American politics and society] is our present

political moment--in which leaders of both parties vie with one another in

expressing their hostility to big government, in proclaiming their faith in

local and private solutions to what used to be considered national and

public problems, and in proposing measures to free the entrepreneurial

talents of the nation from the shackles of centralized regulation and

control (p. 129, emphasis added).

Unfortunately, the authors do not adequately address the severity of this negative bipartisan sentiment underlying the antifederalists' arguments.

In general, this political slant manifests itself in two ways. First, the authors defend the status quo in situations in which the system is clearly not working. This defense sometimes entails dismissing valid and provocative proposals to...