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"Time will reveal that the Iraqis made astonishing progress discovering Federalism as our framers did in 1787," writes Ralf Seiffe, "Some of the difficulties they are experiencing aren’t all that different than the troubles we had creating and ratifying our own Constitution."

Thursday, September 1, 2005

By Ralf Seiffe

OPINION - News from Iraq’s Constitutional debate once again confirms the value of The Federalist and the wisdom it continues to provide some 218 years after it first appeared. Indeed, skeptics of the process in Iraq should take a moment and read a few pages of these remarkable essays. If so, they will learn that what’s happening there, once happened here.

In our own experience, the end of our Revolution produced a political ménage of 13 sovereign states who had arranged themselves under an impotent charter known as The Articles of Confederation. This made the powers of the national government inferior to the prerogatives of the states and it soon became clear that the United States was non-functional as it was then composed.

To correct this, the Congress authorized a deputation to meet in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to work things out. Their charge was to remedy defects of the federal government and to report back to the Congress when they had identified their recommendations.

Instead, they exceeded their authority by scrapping any thought of “fixing” the Articles.

They recognized the impossibility of achieving an effective national government by simply modifying the Articles. Tossing them, the framers met in secret sessions and argued the nature and malignancy of political power. Having experienced government by both a heavy-handed monarch prior to the Revolution and an ineffective free-for-all after, these men were well-positioned to understand the continuum of power.

The Philadelphia meetings had difficulties that threatened to derail the process. Almost at once, some states’ delegates failed to appear and the Convention had to be postponed. For weeks, those who did attend kept a place for the absent delegates and essentially protected their interests.

In the end, however, it was the invention of Federalism that was the most contentious issue.

Federalism required the states to give up some of their sovereignty in exchange for an effective federal, not a national, government.

Ratification was a tall order so three white Protestant men--the kind that modern thinkers now discount as racist and irrelevant--took on the project of selling the Constitution to the states. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay produced an immortal series of letters that did the job then and remain pertinent today.

The situation in Iraq has significant parallels to our own experience more than 200 years ago. By remembering them, one becomes much more confident in the eventual success of the Iraqis.

For example, the Sunnis boycott isn’t much different than Rhode Island’s total absence or the South Carolinians’ failure to appear for a large portion of the Philadelphia Convention.

The Sunnis, the smallest portion of the Iraqi population, have long enjoyed a disproportionate amount of power, benefiting by the Ba’athists pouring the country’s wealth into the Sunni areas. Now that Saddam has fallen, the Kurds and the Shiites want to rectify the distribution of power and wealth. Isn’t it understandable that the Sunnis would resist losing their power?

Certainly, The Federalist thought so.

In the very first number, the author, thought to be Alexander Hamilton, said “Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold…”

In the same essay, Hamilton has something to say about the insurgents and from that, one can predict the eventual failure of their cause. Hamilton advises “For in politics as it is in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword.”

John Jay praises the American authors of our Constitution and his admiration applies to those who created the Iraqi version. “This Convention, composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men, undertook the arduous task.”

The men--and women--who risked life and limb to create the Islamic world’s first real constitution certainly merit Jay’s description.

Another bit of context to take from The Federalist is a sense of time.

These remarkable essays appeared over a period of nearly a year, beginning shortly after the Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. Their schedule reminds us that while the Convention produced a document in about four months, the debate over ratification took much longer. In fact, the whole process, which began at Annapolis on September 11, 1786, did not completely end until Congress declared the Constitution effective on March 4, 1789. What took Americans 905 days, the Iraqis are trying to do in 365. Even factoring the change in communication speed, to declare the Iraqi process defunct because they missed a deadline by a fortnight is myopic or, perhaps, calculated.

Polls say that the Iraqis overwhelmingly want to vote on the proposed constitution even as some elements don’t approve of it. Pundits say that’s reason enough to find the effort not credible. But how is this situation different from our own? Virginia, New York, Rhode Island and North Carolina--a very large part of our original 13 states--did not ratify our Constitution until after votes in nine other states had imposed it on them. One wonders if it would have been ratified if more than nine states’ votes had been required.

Time will reveal that the Iraqis made astonishing progress discovering Federalism as our framers did in 1787. Some of the difficulties they are experiencing aren’t all that different than the troubles we had creating and ratifying our own Constitution.

One large difference between our experiences is the rampant violence in some Iraqi provinces as forces loyal to the old regime burn out.

We had our battles during seven years of revolution and it is important to remember that most Americans remained loyalists during the conflict. The war worked out our differences and by the time of the Constitutional Convention, Americans had become convinced that the new nation was worthwhile. Time will do the same thing for the Iraqis.

So why doesn’t the traditional media recognize the context and report the real progress Iraqi’s are making?

Probably because they think the American Constitution didn’t exist before a series of Supreme Court decisions that began in 1937.

These thousand cuts have managed to put Federalism in the same low regard that the left reserves for dead, European white men including the three who so ably explained Federalism, 19 generations ago.

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.