The impeachment struggle has been a three-cornered contest, among the three branches
of government. Such a
delicate triangular balance is
what keeps things interesting; a contest between but two comes down to arm-wrestling, and is
quickly settled, though maybe settled amiss.
Elizabethan times witnessed a similar struggle among a triad,
with monarch corresponding to the Chief Executive, Parliament to the Congress,
and the third, robed branch, the clergy, replaced now with the judiciary.
In Elizabeth’s time, the puritans
had endeavoured to bring ecclesiastical grievances before the House of
Commons; this, the queen resented,
as it seemed that the commons were endeavouring to go outside their
province and legislate on matters
which could only be constitutionally dealt with by the clergy in convocation,
and by the crown. In this way, the
religious question assumed a constitutional form.
-- Ward & Waller, eds. The
Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. IV: North to Drayton (1909),
p. 305
The parallels here are more than we would have expected,
right down to the detail about the “puritans”, neatly re-incarnated in our own
day by the Woke brigade. And that of the monarch being a Queen -- like our POTUS, though he is of the drama kind, and not of Tudor
blood.
~
The motif of the “Trivet of Conflict” finds its supreme
cinematic embodiment in the final scene-sequence of “The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly” -- not a circular firing-squad, but an equiangular shoot-out. The act plays out, as ideally in the Seventh Art, without words or sudden
motion till the fatal climax,
silent but for the tinkling melody of an antique music-watch winding down. Here too, for our own amusement (or that of the
blog-observing gods) we may match personages across the spheres: here, Good (a.k.a. Blondie) is the Supreme Court (granted,
partisans carp at decisions that do not go their favorite way, but that branch
is surely the most dignified and even relatively impartial); Bad is our naughty POTUS;
and Ugly -- who could that be, but our quarrelsome Congress.
To spare our readers further metaphor, we shall not be
drawing comparisons between the branches as enumerated in the Constitution, and
the Persons of the Trinity (as explicitly enumerated nowhere in Scripture, but now held dear).
~
[Update 8 Feb 2020]
For any who deem the Elizabethan analogy
too ennobling for our present sticky pickle, look ye rather
to that trio of Stooges, who, in simpler days, brought delight to tots and
idlers.
Our pushful POTUS is perfectly
cast
as Moe.
[Update 9 Feb]
What sketch of the American polity, with any pretentions to, well,
pretentiousness, could be considered complete, without the obligatory
obeissance to Tocqueville? We must
check the Tocqueville box.
The basic dynamic of the first two branches of government,
whether monarch and parliament, or President and Congress, is a matter of
politics and power. It is
the third, robed element, whether the Church or the Judiciary, that is less
obvious: with goals and methods less tangible, more nearly timeless.
Historically, as the sway of the Church retreated from the
secular sphere, in general it was
not replaced by another body.
America, it seems, was an exception:
Aucun peuple n’a constitué un aussi grand pouvoir judiciaire que les Américains.
Chez toutes les nations policées de
l’Europe, le gouvernement a toujours montré une grande répugnance à laisser la
justice ordinaire trancher des
questions qui l’intéresent lui-même. … A mesure, au contraire, que la liberté
augmente, le cercle des attribtions des tribunaux va toujours en s’élargissant. …Chez les nations de l’Europe, les tribunaux n’ont que des
pariculiers pour usticible; mais
on peut dire que la cour suprême des Etats-Unis fait comparaître des souverains à sa barre.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, De la
démocratie en Amérique (1835), vol. I, p. 225-6
[Update] To
have three pre-eminent and even quasi-coequal powers within a polis, is
inherently metastable and dramatic, and indeed has found its way into
drama. Cf. the Scottish poet David
Lindsay’s morality-play A Pleasant Satire of the Three Estates (Ane
Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, in contemporary spelling), 1552
[Update / Antedating] The structural theme appears in a play of the sixteenth-century dramatist John Haywood. "The climax to the triangular duel which forms the main episode of
The foure P.P. is an effective piece of dramatic technique."
(Ward & Waller, eds. The Cambridge History of English
Literature, vol. V: The Drama to 1642, Part One (1910), p.95)
