As noted on usconstitution.net, and as should be obvious to any of us living in this country, the United States Constitution, and the “democracy” that results there from, is “deliberately inefficient.” This sort of deliberate inefficiency dates back to the earliest historical democracies, notably Greece. In effect, the inefficiency, not just general bureaucracy but the most important (arguably) pieces of our American system of government—checks and balances, separation of powers, even Federalism itself—serves to divide power so that no one person can ever have too much control, so that no one branch of government can have too much authority. Occasionally, though, this inefficiency, and the details thereof, presents itself in such a way as to make it seem that one man can have too much authority, at least for a time. This doesn’t go as far as, say, the appointment of a Roman dictator, an emergency measure that bypasses an otherwise democratic (in spirit if not in actuality, just like our American system) government.
Instead, we can see a very recent example of what I’m talking about in Senator Richard Shelby’s blanket hold on somewhere around 70 nominations/appointments of federal judges and executive branch positions in order to demand some attention to some of his person, political interests. A spokesperson for Shelby specified those interests as “the Air Force's aerial refueling tanker acquisition and the FBI's Terrorist Device Analytical Center.” Those things may be important—I don’t know enough about the specifics there to comment, really, but that isn’t the point here. This sort of hold has been around for a while, Section 2 of Rule VII of the Rules of the Senate allow for no consideration of bills, resolutions, reports, etc. without unanimous consent of those present. Withholding such consent—that is the hold Senator Shelby used recently. Of course, Article II, Clause 2 of the US Constitution requires the President’s appointments and nominations, though they are his decision, to occur “by and with the advice and consent of the senate.” So, like Senator Shelby did recently, any senator may hold hostage such appointments, at least temporarily—like a filibuster, such a hold may be ended by a cloture vote—to draw attention to whatever he sees fit.
An older, tangentially related example can be found in your history book—though it is usually cited for a separate issue—in the landmark Supreme Court decision in Marbury vs. Madison. John Adams, in the last days of his tenure as President, made some final appointments, notably that of William Marbury as justice of the peace for the county of Washington. The presidential seal was affixed by Secretary of State John Marshall, but the commission—the physical papers—were not delivered to Marbury, because Adam’s tenure ended and the new president, Thomas Jefferson had his Secretary of State, James Madison, withhold the documents. The president—not a senator, as in the recent incident above—and the Secretary of State stood as the agents of inefficiency here, the agents of opposition. For, what is our two-party system but a system of opposition, an antagonistic system that has become a more and more palpable divide in our country over the years? It may supply a sense of stability—with two opposing parties, the country cannot go too far to one extreme, for such movement will simply be reversed when the other party takes over—but it also slows down progress, be it objective and shared by people on bother sides of the partisan divide, or subjective, a partisan-specific issue… but I digress.
There is efficiency possible in government, but it comes from the dictator, the monarch. It comes from putting the decision-making in the hands of one individual. And, it can result in a positive effect—many a Roman dictator solved the crisis that led to his appointment, one of them, Cincinnatus, even voluntarily quit the position immediately thereafter; the rise of South Korea’s economic strength (as we saw in class recently, in viewing a segment from “Asia is Rising”) could be credited to General Park Chung Hee; when Tsar Peter I dictated European dress in the Russian court, it transformed Russian culture; and, another Russian example, ending serfdom took the act of Tsar Alexander II, not a popular movement or a revolution from below. But, under these leaders, under dictators and monarchs, there is brutality. There is a lack of personal freedom. Our republican democracy gives us—though some might debate the thoroughness of this one, given the number of people we imprison or execute in a given year—a freedom from brutality and tyranny, and, with far less limitation than in many other countries, many personal freedoms we would not have under a system the operated with efficiency.
Is it a good thing that Madison could arbitrarily stop a presidential appointment, that Shelby can now? Probably not, in and of itself, but it is just a piece of a system that most Americans would argue is a good one, even when they might protest big government or the political direction we are going at any given moment. It is something we get, when we the people demand a voice.
Some sources consulted (i.e. the ones that aren’t obvious like, say the constitution):
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_sepp.html
http://rules.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=RuleVII
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100209/ap_on_go_co/us_senator_blocking_nominations
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/marbury.HTML