Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government--and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency.

• Author: Buckley, F.H.
• Position: Book review

Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government--and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency

William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe

New York: Basic Books, 2016, 256 pp.

There is a grim inevitability to William Howell and Terry Moe's Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government--and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency. For many years, indeed since Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government in 1885, people have taken the American Constitution to task for jamming up the works of government. Without the concurrence of the House, Senate, and President, it's virtually impossible to pass a law. In contrast, you don't see gridlock in a parliamentary system.

For most American conservatives, that was just fine. We didn't want "progress"--things were bad enough already. Rather, it was the 20th-century progressives who objected to the separation of powers, which got in the way of the reform legislation they proposed. More recently, however, there's been a reversal of roles, as conservatives have recognized that gridlock has made it almost impossible to repeal laws they hate: our Tax Code, the 1965 Immigration Act, and a host of special-interest laws passed when Democrats controlled all three branches. For their part, the intelligent progressives might recognize that gridlock favors things they like: Obamacare, the EPA, and legislation favoring one part or another of the Democratic constituency.

Most conservatives, in the age of Obama, would remedy this by empowering an impuissant Congress. Obama's willingness to disregard Congress and rule by ukase has troubled many on the Right, especially when both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans. Remarkably, Howell and Moe offer a cure for gridlock through a further grant of power to the presidency. What they would give the president would require a constitutional amendment, which is one reason not to pay too much attention to their book. Another reason is that what they propose--fast-track authorization for all policy matters, including budgets and authorizations--would further empower an executive branch already on steroids.

That's not what the Framers wanted, and Howell and Moe's understanding of the Philadelphia debates seems almost entirely derived from the secondary literature in political science. Had they paid more attention to the notes of the debates, they would not have dismissed the delegates' fear of what George Mason called an "elective monarchy," and they might...