Garrett Epps: Bring On Less Democracy

Garrett Epps is the legal affairs editor of The American Prospect. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and a professor of law at the University of Baltimore. His most recent book is Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America.

Is anybody else as depressed as I am about the next four years? 

No matter who wins, we face the prospect of bitterly divided government, savage partisanship in Congress, and increasing executive desperation....

The Framers did not foresee the rise of a two-party system. As a result, the Constitution (unlike most twentieth-century constitutions) makes no provisions for party participation in government, or party accountability in policy. But their vision of disinterested, dispassionate demigods soberly debating the public good barely survived the Washington administration; the Founding generation itself descended into partisan warfare that compares in vitriol with what we face today. No amount of wishing will make party polarization go away—as Senator Richard Lugar learned this week. And amending the Constitution to tie parties more closely to responsibility would be a chancy and dangerous process....