Past the Extreme, Actually

I agree with Howard that the Levinson and Pildes article is very relevant to the current moment, keeping in mind that they wrote it on the understanding that it has been parties have been more relevant than powers for quite some time, including periods in which our conventional habit was to treat separation of powers as if it was still relevant and operative. But I think he misses one trick--a point that suggests that reality has outstripped the Levinson and Pildes thesis, perhaps rendering it descriptively inaccurate on the other end of the extreme. Howard suggests that current events indicate--or confirm, if one agrees with Levinson and Pildes--that party loyalties prevail over branch loyalties. It seems to me that the problem includes but is broader than that. The larger problem is that, in our two-party system, we actually have not one but zero functioning political parties--one because it is locked in the grip of personalism, and the other because it currently lacks almost any identity at all.

The untrammeled personalism of the "party" in power is indeed a train wreck for separation of powers and federalism, among other things. But it's worth noting that Levinson and Pildes didn't think the inevitable result of separation of parties was chaos and incoherence--not, at least, as long as the parties were not only polarized but "cohesive." The adoption of personalism as a substitute for ideas or principles on the part of the Republicans is indeed a serious problem for this or any party in power. But when the opposition party is also lacking even a substitute form of cohesion, including ideological cohesion or a cohesive program--even a cohesive program of opposition--and certainly lacks anything like a leader, the problem is graver. In those circumstances--our circumstances, in my view--the possibility that party interests might serve as a framework in place of the branch interests that Madison envisioned is bound to be even more imperfect and unreflective of any sort of constitutional design.  

UPDATE: Just a brief note about Howard's subsequent post. I doubt that "new ideas" as such would make a difference, at least not unless those ideas reflected some actual change in the electoral zeitgeist and uptick in party energy and enthusiasm. But there still has to be enough of a there there, enough of a core around which cohesion can take place, for a party to effectively function as an opposition. I don't see that as being the case currently, even by Will Rogers standards. ("I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.") That assessment may be mistaken but is certainly not without foundation. And it should not be surprising, given the period of realignment characterizing both parties. The Republican Party has effectively papered over its ongoing post-fusionist debates with a personality; the Democrats have neither resolved what they are nor yet found some means of successfully avoiding that issue.