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Benghazi Fever and the Battle of the Branches

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For the past year or so, left-wing Twitter’s favorite running gag has been to invoke right-wing Twitter’s bizarre fixation on Benghazi—or, rather, on #BENGHAZI—the seemingly unkillable non-scandal which evolved out of the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya. Case in point, @motherjones recently mined laughs by simply repeating #BENGHAZI eight times in the space of a single tweet. Granted, it was pretty funny.

Something about the shrillness of #BENGHAZI truthers, combined with their inability to articulate anything like a coherent accusation, has turned what would otherwise be a grim spectacle into high (unintentional) comedy. But recent events in the corporeal world have conspired to make Benghazi-mania look somewhat less than entirely toothless, and liberals’ derisive laughter has begun to ring a little hollow as a result.

Those recent events include the House Republicans’ decision to empanel a Benghazi Select Committee, and the Democratic minority’s belated decision to play along. Congress has, of course, investigated the events around the 2012 attack before. But now they’ve created something akin to a crackpot Church Committee, designed to air vague innuendo and politically charged euphemisms in the midst of an election year. They’ve essentially created a Karl Rove campaign ad with subpoena power.

tug of war

Tug-of-war photo by Pedro Reyna.

There is a crucial sense, of course, in which the Congressional Republicans have behaved entirely legitimately. The House majority is conducting oversight on the executive branch through established channels and at the behest of its core constituency. Indeed, roughly half of the country approves of the investigation, including 72 percent of registered Republicans, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. There is a solid, small-d democratic foundation for the GOP’s actions, even if that foundation was cemented into place through dubious means.

On the other hand, the executive branch has equally legitimate reasons to spurn the investigation, if that is indeed the path President Obama chooses to take. With public opinion so easily divided, it could easily turn against Republicans once the public theatrics begin in earnest. In the meantime, the Republican head of the House Oversight Committee has already demonstrated a certain propensity to use his subpoena power in a manner both embarrassing to the administration and potentially disruptive to its work. On two separate occasions, chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has subpoenaed secretary of state John Kerry while Kerry is supposed to be traveling in his capacity as the country’s top diplomat. In both cases, Kerry was being summoned to testify about the Benghazi attack.

If the Benghazi Select Committee similarly uses its authority to stymie the work of the White House’s national security team, President Obama could plausibly argue that the investigation threatens to undermine U.S. security interests. And with public opinion on the Select Committee so evenly divided, the White House could certainly claim some popular backing if it were to refuse to cooperate.

That’s not to say that the White House would have political legitimacy on its side if it were to behave in this manner. Nor would the committee have it, if it were to force the matter through aggressive use of its legal authority. Rather, both branches of government would be acting rationally, but as a result of their actions, they would be pulled into a direct confrontation with no obvious, orderly means of resolution. And if the matter were to be put before the federal government’s third branch—the courts—it’s not clear what the result would be. The very nature of the disagreement would make it difficult for the judges to avoid extremely messy political entanglements as they deliberated on the matter.

What we have here is a problem of what the late political scientist Juan Linz would call dual legitimacy. As he wrote in his essay, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” presidential systems are susceptible to political crises in part because “no democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people” (PDF). In trying to explain how the United States has thus far managed to avoid such a crisis, Linz pointed towards “the uniquely diffuse character of American political parties.”

Linz wrote those words back in 1990. After that, it wouldn’t be long before at least one of America’s two major parties got significantly less diffuse. The Republican Party has become extraordinarily ideologically disciplined over the intervening two and half decades, leading various commentators to observe that it now resembles “a European-style parliamentary party,” with all the tight coordination that implies.

As a result, the party has become increasingly effective in its efforts to weaponize previously routine Congressional procedures. This was a relatively novel innovation during the Clinton years, but they have continued to work at it under the Obama administration. And by doing so, they may eventually force President Obama into a situation where he’s compelled to escalate the conflict.

The result would be a genuine political crisis and a not-insignificant threat to the stability of the American presidential system. Granted, such an outcome is far from inevitable; one or both parties could pull back from open conflict. But that would really just postpone the question, not resolve it.

It might not be Benghazi, and it might not even happen under this president, but eventually something could force the American political system’s contradictions to the breaking point. In the meantime, all #BENGHAZI has done is to once again inflame a long-simmering political dilemma.