Pierson and Schickler, too, blame the Constitution, not so much because it was misconceived from the start as because it is now past its sell-by date. For most of American history, although there were some rough patches, the Constitution worked O.K., they think, but it “was simply not designed to meet the challenges we now face.” They compare the system of government the Framers built to “aging and rickety software.”
What Pierson and Schickler are concerned with is not political strife, of which there has been plenty and which democracies are designed to accommodate. It’s polarization, the emergence of two ideologically rigid political parties intolerant of compromise. Compromise is crucial to the system the Constitution designed. That system provides many veto points—“checks and balances”—that are intended to force competing interests to make compromises. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” as Madison put it in Federalist No. 51.
The Constitution itself is the product of compromise. Thomas Jefferson (who was not present at the Convention; he was in Paris, not Philadelphia, normally a good trade-off, but in this case not) was an ideologue. But Madison was a pragmatist. He was trying to design a system that worked, and working systems require buy-in, and buy-in must be bought by giving something up.
Still, Madison could see that the Constitution left the door open for the rise of what he called a “faction,” which he defined as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” In other words, either a movement led by a man on a white horse or a tyranny-of-the-majority regime.
What prevents groups like those from taking power, Madison explained in Federalist No. 10, is not law. It’s geography. Building a majority requires compromise among different groups, all of which want their rights and interests protected in exchange for their coöperation, and the United States is so geographically large and dispersed, with so many local and regional issues at play, that a single-issue faction isn’t going to be able to accrue enough national power to take over the government. “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States,” Madison wrote, “but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”
Pierson and Schickler’s argument is that Madison’s solution no longer works. This is not just because the Internet has made the notion of “geographic dispersion” obsolete. It’s also because the nature of politics has changed.