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One might argue that federalism gets in the way of solving problems that are simply too important to go unsolved.  In short, the argument is that federalism impedes progress on important issues. State to state differences should not be tolerated, he argues, where important needs are involved. “Resources and die-hard beliefs in the role of local government vary too much from state to state” for us to trust State government to deal satisfactorally with grave problems.   I suspect this view is widely held today.

In response, I would argue that the choice of a governance system should only partly be determined by the ease by which particular problems are solved.  In designing the U.S. Government to include a separation of power between the three branches, the delegates in the constitutional convention of 1787 were looking to thwart the solution of problems by the Union’s general government.  In addition to fearing tyranny from a consolidation of power into a few hands, they believed that the functions of that government should be limited because the state legislators are closer to the people, and thus better as republics.  Rather than being problematic,  differences between the States (generically), or republics (more specifically), are natural.  Given the scale involved in many of the States alone, how could a Union of many such republics be anything but inherently diverse?  To ignore the differences and impose one solution on all is artificial and likely to build up pressure for eventual dissolution.  Such pressure can unwittedly be built out of ignorance.   So “ease in solving problems” may actually be antithetical to the criteria we want for designing our system of governance spanning a continent. I would argue, moreover, that it is short-sighted to re-orient a system of governnance to the whims of what is best for handling particular problems of the day.  To subject long-term viability to the vissitudes of the day is to subject one’s posterity to ruin.

One could also point out that federalism is a historical means to forming the Union and is therefore antiquated (as the Union is now formed).  Some of the delegates to the constitutional convention would argue that they had to put up with the continued existence of the States simply due to the politics (i.e., the intractability of the delegates defending their respective States).   Certainly Hamilton would have preferred to do away with the States—replacing them with administrative districts of the federal government.  I believe that a significant number of Americans today share Hamilton’s view.  If this sentiment is dominant among the citizens, we should give serious thought to a constitutional convention for the purpose of replacing federalism with consolidation, officially through an amendment.  Even though I believe that this option is not compatible with having a republic at the Union level, if a super-majority wants to change our system of governance, it should be changed (assuming a “constitutional moment” of reflection and debate on the proposal).

I do not believe that federalism was merely used as a political means of achieving agreement on the creation of a general government.  As I have written in another post, the diversity spanning an empire-scale polity can be accommodated by federalism.  Some large States are sufficiently large in themselves that they have diversity that could justify a federal system.  Consider, for example, California and Illinois.  Each of these republics is sufficiently diverse in its provinces that federalism could accommodate the different cultures and bring legislation that is more fitting and less compromised for all concerned.   That new States have been added to the Union since its founding—some of the last of which being quite different culturally from the others (e.g., HI and AK)—means that there could be even more diversity within the Union today than when it was founded (assuming that transportation and communications technology has not totally overridden the diversity inherent in the territorial scale of empire).  Paradoxically, the need for federalism could be more pressing today.  I have already argued that republic principles may be stretched too thin at the empire scale.  This, plus the matter of accommodating diversity within the empire, strongly points to the utility of restoring federalism. 

Finally, someone could say something like,  ”I believe in the power of each State, but I have NO confidence in the people” running the State governments.”  This point may resonate with the extant condition of state government today in the United States. That is, the eclipse of the State governments has almost certainly had an impact on the quality of the representatives the State level.  Do the best and brightest really want to work in a legislature that has been reduced to considering by and large local government issues?  What sort of person would agree to campaign for a rather impotent position?   The situation now is markedly different than in the revolutionary period, when the preference of the best and brightest of the politicians was to serve their respective countries.   Even as late as 1860, General Lee felt obliged to fight for his native Virginia—turning down Lincoln’s request that he fight for the U.S. Government.   So presumably were a balance of power restored such that State governments would have real power over the issues that really concern us, we might find the quality of our State reps improve.  We might have better candidates to choose from, and we might take more interest in their campaigns.  So I would argue that the enervated conditon of State government today should not be taken as indicative of how such government would look were it restored to a balance of power with the U.S. Government. For example, were the National Governor's Association given a formal role in determining American foreign policy, we might see better candidates running for governor.

In closing, I want to note that being in a large Union that is inherently diverse does require a certain amount of tolerance for regional differences.  “Not trusting” a State’s people who have a different understanding of government or who feel a different way on a problem is not consistent with having a Union.  That is to say, we won’t last as a Union if a dominant faction in one region imposes its ideology on States in other regions spanning the continent.  A certain humility is necessary.  Of course,  a Union has certain bed-rock common principles (in our case, representative democracy, for example) that delimit certain behavior and laws (e.g., holding other races in slavery).   The problem is the slippery slope wherein one uses “common principles” to impose one’s own ideology and the natural diversity spanning a continental Union is not accommodated.   The people of a republic will naturally want out if their way of life is imposed upon without justification.   In short, being in a Union requires having a sufficient tolerance that can admit that not every State is going to solve your important problems in the way you want.   I suspect that this Union has lost too much of this tolerance (contributing to divisive partisanship at the federal level).   One size fits all over a polity spanning across a continent (and beyond!) is likely to involve bitter partisanship because people view the approach as all or none.   To be sure, there may not be sufficient tolerance anymore among Americans to allow for a viable system of federalism.  Moreover, federalism itself is not perfect, so debate on it could lead to a decision by the popular sovereign to make the United States officially consolidated.  In my view, however, such a debate is urgently needed, for otherwise the American people will continue to live a consolidated lie under the rubric of federalism on parchment.

On January 12, 2011, President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the fallen victims of the assasination attempt on Rep. Giffords. “What we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other,” the President said. “That we cannot do. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility.” Had we really been turning on each other? It is as though a bystander had pointed out to two people arguing that they were indeed shouting.  "Were we really shouting?" one might ask the observer in astonishment--to which the observer would nod and add, "You guys might try a bit of humility," rather than, as the President observed, "pointing fingers or assigning blame.”  The night after the President's speech, I watched Karen Armstrong, the former nun and author of <i></i>History of God<i></i> and other books, on <i></i>Charlie Rose<i></i>. She pointed out that discussion in which others' motives are presumed and impugned involve a certain arrogance.  Each of us is a mystery to ourselves, she added.  How can we be so sure of the other partisan's motives?  Along a line similar to Armstrong's point, President Obama continued in his speech, “let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Empathy and humility are attributes antipodal to anger and pride. How often are the former two invoked in political discourse? How often are two partisans reminded that they have been turning on each other, in effect?  Are Americans really turning on each other?  Is the house so divided and so acrimonious?  It could indeed be that we, the American people, have allowed ourselves to be unwittingly drawn into a fight in which the pundits on television and radio benefit attentionwise and financially from the escalation. I do not believe that we are a warring people intrinsically, though we do seem to be vulnerable to artful and manipulatory public figures.  Perhaps we are too readily inclined to engage in hero worship.  Indeed, there could have been some of that involved in the 2008 Presidential election. We do tend not always to rise to the occasion in managing or resolving real differences, whether in campaigns or in voting. Popular sovereignty, our Founders averred, relies on a virtuous and informed electorate. This involves the citizens feeling a sufficient civic duty to take a serious look at real differences and make a solid decision on election day that reflects their own respective political and moral ideologies. To be sure, fundamental differences do exist.

Paul Krugman, for example, points to a "deep divide in American political morality," in which he believes there is "no middle ground." He takes the health reform law passed in 2010 as a case in point. "One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose." This difference can perhaps be characterized as pitting a moral imperative of a right to life in terms of survival (and the immorality of selfishness) against the moral imperative of property rights (and the immorality of theft via high taxes).  It is no wonder that tempers flaired in the debate amid such emotionally-charged language. Politics involves conflict over things that people hold dear--their values and beliefs. Representative democracy has the beneficial feature whereby relatively cool representatives debate and decide such policy. How quickly the Rights of Man became savage mobs in Paris in 1792. Does liberty translate into a mass of people, out of control and rushing into a prison to disembowel priests and slice limbs off aristocrats? Political discourse can be much worse than that to which President Obama had in mind when he characterized the American people as having been turning on each other. The extent of the "deep divide" in America can, with the aid of human nature, issue in violence, but this need not be, and I contend that we are a too peaceful a people to be led so astray by our passions abetted by media personalities and demogogues.  We may be making it more difficult on ourselves by willowing practically all public policy through the federal government.

We do have fifty republics we can draw on to have the sort of diversity of policy that could reduce the pressure on us to resolve the deep divide into one size as if one way could fit all. However, this solution would require tolerance. Burgess avers that there "is an important moral dimension to federalism, as it is all about toleration, mutual respect, and equality of partnership, amongst other principles." (Burgess, p. 70) For example, people in Idaho who not want government mandated health-care coverage must be willing to tolerate Massachusetts's mandate (and subsidies), and vice versa. With empathy and humility can come tolerance. We are doing pretty well with religious tolerance, at least relative to historical instances of persecutions. In the seventeenth century, for example, four Quakers were burnt in New England--ostensibly for refusing to pay a church-tax that would go to a church they did not support. In the case of the contemporary uncivil public discourse, perhaps it would help to recognize that one size does not fit all in an empire-scale union--that ironically unum is strengthened precisely by tolerating more pluribus. I suspect this point has been lost on Americans since the founding. We should not be surprised that there are substantial differences in a country that stretches across a continent and then some. In European terms, we are a union of nations--our states are equivalent in scale and political type (i.e., semi-sovereign political units of a union) to their countries. Accordingly, I contend that the U.S. Government ought to start dealing with those countries at the E.U. level.

In short, perhaps we have turned on each other because we have forgotten what we--the United States--are. Having lost sight of our polities, we have unwittingly suffered our differences to fit into the narrow funnel of uniformity, which we assume is requisite for unity. According to Burgess, “the formal organization of human relations [undergirding federal systems] must be founded upon ‘diversity’ as its cardinal principle. Consequently, we require unity but not uniformity.” (Burgess, p. 68)  This is especially applicable where the federal system is on an empire-level. In effect, we have forgotten the meaning of e pluribus unum; we have lost touch with what we are. Perhaps our angry public discourse is in part an eruption of our own subterranean angst, whose existential source is simply a hazy sense of being lost or adrift in some way. One cannot but be lost if one has forgotten what one is. We have forgotten that we, the U.S., are a union of republics that are commensurate to European countries.  Sandra Day O'Conner once remarked at a small group setting, "Congress is acting like a state legislature." Evidently, Congress had forgotten what it is. If a person or group of people lose touch with what they intrinsically are, it likely won't be long before the unsteered ship runs up against a reef. So it is only natural to feel a sense of angst while adrift without a sense of what one is. The tenor of our public discourse is merely a symptom. The question is whether we will treat it as such and dive deeper to get at the real problem, which lies in our own lack of understanding of what we are.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14krugman.html?_r=1&hp
Burgess, Michael, “Federalism and federation,” in European Union Politics, Michelle Cini, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 65-79.