domes, sweet domes
I
had intended to comment on the Middle East fiasco like everybody else, but
apparently while I slept Mr. Putin, playing the King’s Syrian Defense, achieved
a cunning fianchetto that has for the moment transformed the board, leaving
Secretary Kerry dumbfounded by his own prescience, leaving President Obama
temporarily grasping a red life-line, leaving the members of Congress
undisturbed in their pusillanimity, leaving Mr. Assad in power and in a
strengthened position, and leaving Russian influence in the region enhanced:
quite an achievement for a single move of a pawn. So I’d probably better write about the Venetian Republic
instead.
The
Republic of Venice endured for a thousand years, expiring in 1797, just as our
own was still taking its hesitant toddler’s steps. We shall before too long have made it to the quarter-mile
post, but though I am a patriot and try my best to be an optimist, I must in
imagination tremble before the uncertainties of the long three-quarters of the
race I shall never see. As the world becomes more complicated
the work of democracy, which we already shirk, becomes ever more
demanding. The possibility of
self-destruction sounds melodramatic, but it is in fact a banal reality. We very nearly tore ourselves apart
once before.
The
fifteen minutes of fame of an obscure Michigan representative named Bart Stupak
ended on March 21, 2010.
That night the House of Representatives approved H. R. 3590, a motion to
concur in the Senate’s amendments to the “Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act” (alias ObamaCare), by a vote of 219 (all Democrats) to 212
(178 Republicans and 34 Democrats).
The country has not had a day of political peace since then. As for Mr. Stupak, he did not seek
reelection, moving on to the “private sector” to become—no prizes for
guessing!—a lobbyist.
Some
people, including even some members of Congress, eventually got around to
reading the Affordable Care Act within the first three years after its passage,
and they were alarmed by various things they discovered there. House Republicans began the charade of
repeated votes to repeal the law. President
Obama was sufficiently alarmed to decide that certain parts of it don’t really
count, at least for the time being.
In
a democracy, the majority rules.
The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. Were it not for slim majorities, very
little would get done. And in fact
very little does get done. According to one common analysis, the
chief engine of “Washington gridlock” is the Senate rule—an
extra-constitutional custom, not a law—that in effect requires a sixty percent
super-majority for the completion of much important business. But effective government requires
not merely constitutional agency but wisdom—which is, alas,
extra-constitutional, and perhaps extra terrestrial. “He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his
substance,” writes the Psalmist.
“To bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach his senators
wisdom.” But who will teach ours? The legality of the
Affordable Care act has now been resolved according to our system. But just how wise is it to effect “fundamental transformation” on a party-line
vote with a majority of seven out of four hundred and thirty-one?
ceremony of the screwball
Things
were ordered differently in old Venice.
The chief man there was called the doge
(as in dux, il duce, or the Duke).
He was the equivalent of our POTUS, except that the civic rituals of
Venice were much more interesting than those in Washington. The President of the United States throws
out the first pitch of the baseball season. Standing on the poop of a magnificently decorated barge, the
doge of Venice each Ascension Day (Sensa,
in the old Venetian dialect) threw a wedding ring into the Adriatic, thus
confirming the marriage of his maritime republic to the waves through which its
merchant ships plied their lucrative trade.
ceremony of the Sensa (by Canaletto)
The office of the doge was elective, but the Venetians chose to dramatize those elements of whimsy and chance that lie just beneath the surface of all democratic endeavors. Here is how the ten steps of the election deployed.
¶ 1º, 30 electors were chosen by lot from the Great Council (Concilium
Sapientis or Senate), an enclave of the hereditary aristocracy
¶ 2º, a second
lottery chose 9 of that thirty
¶ 3º, the 9
placed 40 names in nomination
¶ 4º, twelve of
the forty names were chosen by lot
and forwarded
¶ 5º, the
chosen 12 nominated 25 candidates
¶ 6º, from the
25, nine names were chosen by lot
¶ 7º, these 9
then put 45 names in nomination
¶ 8º, from the
list of 45, eleven names were
chosen by lot
¶ 9º, the eleven appointed 41 electors
¶ 10º the 41
electors elected a doge.
In several old history textbooks these Venetian protocols
were offered up as light relief, curious divagations of the medieval mind
unthinkable in modern rationality.
More recently, however, they have been seriously studied by economists
and applied mathematicians who note that their consistent tendency is the
requirement of a super-majority of at least 61% in the final vote and as much as 81.8% at
various earlier stages of election.* There
were no squeakers in ducal elections, only landslides. Several historians have concluded that the
long stability of republican government in Venice, as compared with the
notorious and often violent volatility of that in some other Italian civil
corporations, is to be explained in part by the hyper-legitimacy of a doge
elected by hyper-majority. Let me remind you: the Venetian Republic did last a thousand years.
*See
for example Jay Coggins and C. Federico Perali, “64% Majority Rule in Ducal
Venice: Voting for the Doge,” in Public
Choice (1998):709-723.
