Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

Despite the obvious potential for abuse—i.e., for filibusters to introduce paralysis, and for cloture to introduce tyranny—this system has worked throughout most of our history. Minorities as well as supermajorities have recognized the potential for abuse, and resorted only rarely to filibusters and even more rarely to cloture. Under our first 43 presidents and our first 220 years of constitutional government, our Senate opposed a total of only 68 presidential nominees for government positions by filibusters. But when Democratic President Obama was elected in 2008, Republican leaders declared their intent to block anything that he proposed. That included blocking 79 Obama nominees by filibusters in just four years, more than in the entire previous 220 years. Democrats responded by abolishing the supermajority requirement for approving presidential nominees other than Supreme Court justices, thereby making it possible to fill government jobs but also reducing the safety valve available to a dissatisfied minority. A filibuster is merely the most extreme and least frequent method to prevent confirmation of presidential nominees. In President Obama’s second term of office from 2012 to 2016, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed the lowest number of presidentially nominated judges since the early 1950’s, and the lowest number of appeals court judges (the court level immediately below the Supreme Court) since the 1800’s.