Charles Lane, an opinion writer for The Washington Post, published an essay on Feb. 3, 2020 titled, ”The problem with impeachment is that the Constitution is working.”

He iterates this idea in his third sentence: “The real problem is that the Constitution is working.”

The Trump Impeachment was on-going at the time, and Lane stated that removing a president through impeachment is hard because the Constitution makes it hard. Lane wasn’t saying that the difficulty is good, necessarily. He was saying the Constitution isn’t a good fit for America today: the Constitution “working” is a problem.

The reason it works less well today than in the past is that since the 1990s, American politics has become hostile and partisan. America has had two political parties (sometimes three) throughout its history. But until the 1990s the two parties worked together for the good of the country.

America between 1945 and 1992 exhibited some attributes of what political scientists call “consociational democracy,” in which political parties of a heterogeneous society agree, formally or informally, to respect certain norms for the sake of power-sharing and stability.
Many parliamentary systems, because of frequent coalition negotiations among parties, are structurally consociational. The “two-party system” that the Cold War fostered in the United States, however, has proved transitory. Republicans’ partisan impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998-1999 was — also in hindsight — an early symptom of its decay.”

"Consociational” is a new word. Think of it as “cooperative.” A consociational government would be one in which many distinct groups – none of them the majority – cooperate to get things done. That is in contrast with a majoritarian system, in which nothing gets done unless one side holds the majority all by itself because they refuse to cooperate.

Madison and the other founders defended the rule of the majority, but they did not want majorities to be guided only and always by partisan loyalty. John Adams famously called antagonistic political parties “the greatest evil:”

"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."

Adams was probably thinking about the state constitution of Massachusetts, and not the US Constitution when he said this. But the sentiment applies equally.

Impeachment under the Constitution could serve the purpose the founders intended if every member of the House considered the issues fairly on the impeachment question, and then every member of the Senate considered the issues fairly during the trial. The law and the testimony in the Trump trial were clear. Trump was exonerated because of party loyalty — not because he was innocent of abuse of power.

Lane’s message is if the impeachment process doesn’t work in the case of Trump, it may never happen ever in the future. Lane points us back to an important essay from 1990, The Perils of Presidency, by Juan Linz. Countries headed by presidents were shown to be less stable and less effective than parliamentary governments. At the time he was writing, Linz called the US a happy exception to the rule. America seemed able to avoid the problems that Linz found in other countries headed by presidents. Under Trump, America is experiencing exactly the sort of instability and dismay that Linz says is typical of non-parliamentary democracies.

Lane’s message is that, with the partisan and combative political parties we have now, America is no longer the sort of country the Constitution was meant for.

Lane’s essay got me to thinking: How do we know that the Constitution is working?

With most devices and most processes, it is easy and obvious to see when they are working. A lawn mower is working if the motor runs and grass clippings shoot out the side. A compass is working if the needle points North.

But what about the Constitution? How do we know it is working? The preamble lists six goals. We ordain and establish this Constitution In order to

form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

It is fair to ask all those goals have been fulfilled under the Constitution. It is not fair to excuse the Constitution from responsibility, because the document says that achieving those six goals is the purpose for which it was created.

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