In Congress, Dysfunctional 'R Us

After Shays' Rebellion, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison: "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." Madison was less sanguine: "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power." George Washington too was nervous: "Let us have a government by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once." Indeed, the 1786-87 armed uprising in Massachusetts sobered the minds of many attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. It's one reason why the Framers ultimately designed Congress to be, well, dysfunctional. Though Congress was created to pass laws, what it mostly does is stymie them. Easy or undemanding change through legislation, the Framers figured, would be a dangerous thing. Slate's Shankar Vedantam observes that the idea that Congress was designed to gum up the works is nothing new: "Political scientists have made this argument for years ... What we criticize as dysfunction or ineptitude is really an institution designed with a profoundly conservative vision—that's conservative with a small C. ... You can see this as good or bad, but that's not the point. The point is that it's silly to build a supertanker and then criticize the sailors because the ship doesn't maneuver like a speedboat." Therefore, Vedantam concludes, Congress deserves an "A" for not raising the debt ceiling (yet). How's that for counterintuitive thinking? Heh.