Democracy is Delicious

Why should I care if the Senate has a filibuster any more? Aside from the fact that “filibuster” is a great word?

Consider the two party system of American Politics. It’s like we’re all trying to order pizza. One group of people wants pepperoni and sausage, but the other group of people is a bunch of vegetarians and wants mushrooms and olives. This leads to endless argument. Then someone like John McCain comes to the door with a cheese pizza, and we’re all so hungry that we eat it even though it’s not what we really want. This seems to be the overall arc of politics during my lifetime: people yell about their principles for a while, then settle on something no one’s quite happy with. And it goes on like that, for pizza meal after pizza meal. We could try calling out for Chinese food, I guess, but then we’d have to change the Constitution.

This is not actually so bad a system, in my opinion. I mean, I’ve never gotten to eat my mushroom & olive pizza, but I’m also spared the laws requiring me, a vegetarian, to eat that pepperoni. It could be better, but hey, at least I’m nourished. And, because I think it’s better to be eating cheese than pepperoni, I’m glad the carnivores are eating the cheese with me.

These days, though, it seems like the President and Congress are getting really, really hungry for pepperoni. This is a little worrisome, because they’re Republicans, which means that if they get it together in a big way they can just buy the pizza parlor. And if they buy it, my worry isn’t so much that I’ll be forced to eat pepperoni. My worry is that they’ll make me pretend I like it.

What does this have to do with the filibuster? Even though there are fewer of us who like mushrooms than there are people who like pepperoni right now, the filibuster is one of the ways we can tell people how delicious mushrooms are and how bad for you pepperoni is. Now, if three fifths of the people’s representatives truly don’t want to hear about the mushrooms any more, the mushrooms are off the table. But up to that point, we respect the minority’s rights in this country. We draw the line at anchovies, but we’re still wiling to talk mushrooms so long as there’s some doubt in the matter.