Michele Bachmann: Bad Constitutionalist

Michele Bachmann’s recent statements on the budget fight show she still has a lot to learn about the U.S. Constitution.

In her criticism of the compromises being made, she made a commitment to vote “no” on any CR that did not completely defund Obamacare . This stalwart stance to cut funding is par for the course. However, her reasoning for this commitment is not.

While citing her pledge to cut spending for the American people, Bachmann misses a key point regarding the Constitution: Michele Bachmann’s voters elected her.  Yes, her voters are American citizens but that’s where the similarity stops.  Reading her statements gives a sense that she’s speaking for all of the American people as the leader of a unanimous movement. This type of rhetoric ignores many of the Constitutional principles that have guided the development of our country.

What would James Madison think? In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison argued that representative democracies are favorable to a pure democracy structure because representatives can distill and refine the public interest.  That’s why we created a republic. Bachmann seems to have reversed this representative relationship: developing policy decisions and gaining her legislative authority solely from the public.

Representation isn’t devoid of its institutional boundaries. It’s upsetting that many congressional members have taken the Bachmann route in defending their legitimacy as policymakers.  The American people give extremely low approval ratings to Congress and Bachmann fashions herself and other Tea Party representatives as leading a fight to change the arc of history. Ostensibly, this fight would occur to change congressional boundaries and alter the way business is conducted in Washington.

Republics work well when the members understand that they have a responsibility to protect the institution and their constituency. Pretending that you have a national mandate as a congressional representative is simply a misunderstanding of representational democracy. Bachmann and others using her rhetoric should take pains to understand that America was founded this way to avoid a pure democracy.  Turns out, pure democracies don’t work very well.  If Bachmann thinks differently, well, I would ask Ancient Greece about that one.

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