Checks and Balances in the US Constitution

I just came across something I wrote back in 1993 dealing particularly with checks and balances in the US national government. Something that's perenially relevant, although in some times - like 2018 - more urgent than others. Some I'm includig the text below.

Debate on the Constitution

I am reading the first volume of the Library of America's Debate on the Constitution, which presents both sides of the debate, putting the discussion into the ideological and polemical context of the time. For most readers, only the pro-Constitution views of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in The Federalist Papers have previously been easily accessible.

The reader is reminded, in the terms of today's political debates, that our federal government was designed to produce a certain amount of gridlock. The Founders wanted to see a strong central government capable of effective, united .national action. But they also wanted to put limits on the ability of politicians motivated by momentary passions to enact unwise or oppressive legislation. The separation of powers was their chief instrument for doing so. A popular assembly, the directly-elected House of Representatives, could be carried away by enthusiasm and enact drastic measures for, say, debt relief. But they would be checked by the Senate and the veto power of the Chief Executive.

The separation of powers was also designed to be the chief guard against Executive tyranny and judicial misbehavior. The Bill of Rights was not included in the original Constitution, and this omission became the most potent of the opponents' arguments against the new government. For the advocates of the Constitution, the competing power centers in the federal government were a more sure guarantee of liberty than rights enumerated on paper. If the President went too far in attempting to suppress freedom of the press or assembly, Congress was there to jealously guard the rights of the people. If the courts tried to ignore due process, Congress could pass new legislation or impeach bad judges. And so on.

The writing itself strikes modern readers as elevated and dignified, partly because older language, free of current idioms and slang ( like "gridlock") , tends to sound more proper and correct to us than it did to them. But these polemics contain their share of exaggeration and purple prose. Federalist John Stevens, Jr., writing in 1787, declared that the debate on the American Constitution "is evidently the most important discussion that ever employed the pen or engaged the attention of man." Americans early developed the idea that our concerns were obviously the most important in the world.

These debates took place during the Age of Enlightenment when educated men shared a faith in reason that seems hopelessly naive in the age of Auschwitz. But the Framers of the Constitution were more cautious. Democratic representation and self-government by the people were their central concerns. But the vehicle was to be a government in which the selfish ambitions of the human heart were to be channelled into avenues that would protect freedom and guard against tyranny. Institutional constraints were more reliable than faith in the good nature of politicians.