How Romans Squandered their Republic. And How We Now Squander Ours.

With the fight over Justice Scalia’s seat moving to full boil, pundocracy and politicians alike are scouring history for precedent to defend a level of obstruction previously unwitnessed. It was no surprise when the GOP trumpeted a near-25-year-old clip of a then Senator Joe Biden floor speech, they treated “The Biden Rule” as though the Ark of the Covenant. Our chattering class lives on a short time horizon. The purported eighty years since a justice was nominated and approved in an election year, is considered ancient history. While it is nice to see Justice Frank Murphy get his due, the most informative case studies lies still further back — more than 2,000 years back with the disintegration of the Roman Republic. And that republic’s fate offers little in the way of comfort. Indeed, our following the Roman’s map could well wreck our republic.

The Constitution’s Framers famously looked to Rome’s Constitution for lessons on how to construct a stable political order. More specifically, they saw in its flaws lessons about how to avoid instability. As Madison and Hamilton looked to Rome to understand what to avoid, so should we. And we are already far enough along that every citizen should shutter. By his actions, Mitch McConnell is moving us closer towards the Roman’s unenviable fate.

Of course there is no single reason their Republic fell. Libraries can be filled on the specifics contributors to their collapse: foreign adventures, a handful of families controlling most of the Empire’s wealth, unfair taxation, ascendant demagogues, corruption. Any and all of these should give pause as more than a little familiar. Crassus and Pompey whipped up the masses to serve their ends, but were turned on by the mob. Legionnaires returning to Rome found their property seized and no work. Femagogues promised a return to a time of “greatness” and tranquility that never really existed. The greatest danger in Rome, however, didn’t lay simply in this long list of challenges. Their Republic instead failed because politicians, whether in pursuit of a perceived common good or for personal gain, subverted the political norms that were essential to their Republic’s proper function.

Like all well-governed society, Roman political order depended not merely on written law but on certain mutually accepted norms. The law endowed officials with certain powers, but the use of power was proscribed by long respected traditions. Such norms allowed the Republic to move with great efficiency when under threat, governing for more than 500 years. But when individual politicians realized that breaking these norms offered unprecedented power, the temptation proved too great. To be fair to the Romans, the motivation for these actions was sometimes motivated by the noblest intentions. Yet whether venal or honorable, each violation of those norms moved Rome’s Republic closer to destruction.

Consider for example the office of Tribune of the Plebs. Tribunes were tasked in Rome with protecting the people’s rights. They accomplished this task by wielding a veto over legislation (the origin of our own system of the same name). If legislation threatened the Plebs, a tribune used his veto. Under the unwritten rules, this structure worked well enough for centuries. Then two plebs, the Gracchi brothers, seized power by violating those unwritten norms. The Brothers’ goals were progressive, even far sighted. Rome suffered under the crush of mass landlessness. Impoverished men, often former soldiers and their families, packed into Rome, breeding worse and worse violence. Of course, the Gracchi understood this urban poverty as a threat to the Republic. And they saw a simple answer: Rome needed to distribute land to these men. The Senate, however, refused.

The Gracchi solution? Veto all legislation until the Senate bent to their demands and passed land reform. And the plan worked. Of course, the Senate, no doubt thinking the Gracchi were undermining the Republic, responded in kind by breaking the norms. When the Senate murdered the brothers, they doubtless thought the norm would be restored. Of course it wasn’t. The Gracchi had written an instruction manual on how to seize power. Other with far less noble goals would follow their lead. Like glass vases, shattered political norms are too often shattered for good.

Nor was abuse exclusive to those representing Rome’s lower castes. Rome invested executive power in two equal consuls, elected with each new year. Julius Caesar’s consular colleague, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, feared Caeser might upend the Republic with a progressive reform program. Bibulus hatched a clever ruse to foil Caesar. Consuls were tasked with declaring religious holidays on which no business could be conducted. In a move without precedent, Bibulus simply declared every day in his and Caesar’s consulship a holiday. Caesar, not to be out done, simply ignored Bibulus declarations and continued passing legislation — a vicious spiral, which in the fullness of time led to war, blood shed, and the Republic’s demise.

All of this should ring familiar. When Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, McConnell fears for Republican prospects. To foil the Democratic majority, he began filibustering every substantive Democratic proposal. This strategy meant legislation, all legislation, would require 60 votes in the Senate. To this end, he filed a record 139 cloture motions to force that 60 vote requirement (for context, the previous record was set in the 104th Congress, by McConnell’s predecessor Senator Bob Dole, at 82 cloture motions. Before 1970, the record was a whopping 7). This strategy proved so successful, McConnell continued with it in the 111th congress when a Democrat won the White House, filing 137 cloture motions. In turn President Obama sought to circumvent what he perceived as Republican obstruction, by pushing the limits of Executive Power to accomplish his own goals.

As with Rome, once this cycle is begun, abuse continues to spiral and norms continue to erode. After McConnell ascended to majority leader in the 112th Congress, a new cloture record was set at 253. But it wasn’t just Democrats filing these motions: McConnell filed when he believed Democrats could find 51 votes for something he opposed. Grandstanders Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz filed to stymie McConnell when they disapproved of his agenda. Sixty votes is thus the new normal. A supermajority, wholly absent from our written constitution, is now required to pass any law. The business of legislation on which our government functions has ground to a near halt.

The struggles over judicial nominees, a fight which goes back at least to the Civil Rights Era, has followed a similar trajectory. Obstruction by both sides is the new normal. With the Scalia vacancy, we have reached a new low. Once Senators might, for reasons both far sighted and contemptible, block a specific nominee; now a president is being stymied regardless of whom he might choose. Yes, some will say just as no doubt some Romans did, that this is nothing new. It is worth recalling that the great Justice Marshall was appointed by President John Adams when Adam’s had already gone down in defeat to Thomas Jefferson. Bitter, heated partisanship is nothing new. Still, it has not always been thus.

If this isn’t enough to breed worry, understand that we are nowhere near the bottom. Each new year will bring new means of obstruction, creating more gridlock. Norms will continue to evaporate. Ironically, Antonin Scalia professed a great reverence for the Framers’ wisdom. What a tragedy that his death is moving us closer towards what they saw as a cautionary tale. The Framers had no illusions about people’s hunger for power. The constraints they carefully laid on elected officials were made with just this hunger in mind. Breaking these bonds releases civic beasts that can consume us all.

Can Americans reforge these broken bonds of unwritten norms? Rome offers no basis for hope. One-upmanship in Roman politics bred such frustration that effective governance required an unprecedented dictatorship; the Republic was left a hollowed façade, without power or representation. Frustrated Romans looked to demagogues just as American citizens embrace those promising relief from “business as usual.” And who can blame them? What hope we might find in our history comes likewise as little comfort. When last our government was shoaled, then over slavery, the ship of state only escaped on a tide of blood. History offers many warnings, but few guides to success. Just as some Romans saw disaster that demanded extraordinary measures around every corner, no doubt others imagined that their Republic would endure forever. What appear on the horizon as mere bumps, can prove to be unclimbable mountains. Republics fail. Democracies fall. Romans squandered their inheritance in a seizure of shortsightedness. Americans should heed their warning. We should call forth both virtue and self interest in order to save our own fragile constitution.