"The Power Pendulum"

When political parties treat the Constitution like a game of Monopoly, America risks losing the one thing neither party can afford: rules that survive power.

Let me take you back to fifth grade, because sometimes the most sophisticated explanation for Washington’s behavior can be found on a schoolyard blacktop.

Every playground had that one kid who simply could not lose. You could beat him fair and square, and somehow there was always a new rule you had supposedly violated. Heads, he won. Tails, you lost. And if the coin landed on its edge? Congratulations, he owned the coin.

I have watched that same mentality migrate from the playground straight into the highest levels of American politics.

When Democrats control the White House, they demand that everyone respect the election, respect the institution, respect the president, and, above all, give their side the opportunity to govern. Fair enough. That is how representative government is supposed to work and should work.

But when the political winds change direction, suddenly the rulebook develops a fascinating new interpretation.

The voters’ decision becomes something to obstruct. The president becomes someone to remove. Impeachment gets resurrected. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment gets whispered about. And ideas like expanding the Supreme Court suddenly become less about constitutional restraint and more about finding a way to make the institution produce the desired political outcome.

That is not principled governance.

That is political scorekeeping with a constitutional costume.

And here is the part that seems to escape Washington’s political class: the pendulum swings.

Power changes hands.

It always has.

It always will.

The party celebrating its dominance today may be the minority screaming tomorrow. The procedural weapon you cheerfully deploy against your opponent eventually ends up in your opponent’s hands. And once that happens, you may discover that the weapon you thought was clever looks considerably less clever when it is pointed back at you.

That brings me to the increasingly aggressive campaign to remake the Supreme Court.

The Washington Post recently reported on growing liberal support for fundamentally altering the Court, including proposals to increase the number of justices from nine to thirteen and impose eighteen-year limits on what have traditionally been lifetime appointments.

There are also efforts involving ethics rules and restrictions on the Court’s emergency docket.

Some Democrats, including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, have openly embraced these efforts. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats have also called for reconsidering the size and structure of the Court.

Now, before anyone reaches for the fainting couch and accuses me of ignoring legitimate concerns about judicial ethics, let me be clear: the Supreme Court is not above criticism.

Of course it isn’t.

No institution should be.

But there is a massive difference between criticizing a judicial decision and redesigning the institution because you don’t like the decisions it produces.

That distinction matters.

If your argument is that a justice violated an ethical standard, make the case.

If your argument is that the Court misinterpreted the Constitution, explain precisely where and why.

If you believe a ruling was legally wrong, take the legal argument apart.

But if your primary evidence is, “I hated the outcome,” then you haven’t demonstrated judicial misconduct. You’ve demonstrated disappointment.

And disappointment is not a constitutional doctrine.

This is where the whole thing becomes dangerous.

The Supreme Court was designed to be insulated, at least to some degree, from the immediate political passions of the moment. That independence is not an inconvenience accidentally left in the Constitution. It is part of the architecture.

The Court is supposed to be the place where nine people can say “no” to the political branches; even when that answer makes presidents, members of Congress, activists, donors, or voters furious.

Imagine what happens if we turn that principle upside down.

Suppose one party expands the Court from nine justices to thirteen because it believes the existing Court is too conservative.

What happens when the other party returns to power?

Does it simply accept thirteen?

Or does it decide that fifteen would be more appropriate?

Then seventeen?

Then nineteen?

Twenty-one?

At that point, congratulations. We haven’t “reformed” the Supreme Court.

We’ve created a congressional committee with robes.

And once the Court becomes nothing more than a partisan numbers game, the institution itself becomes disposable. Every election becomes a potential judicial coup by arithmetic.

Lose an election?

Change the Court.

Win an election?

Change it again.

Lose again?

Add more seats.

Eventually, nobody believes the decisions. Nobody trusts the institution. And nobody accepts the referee because everyone knows the referee can be replaced whenever the score becomes inconvenient.

That isn’t reform.

That’s institutional demolition by installment plan.

And here’s the irony: Democrats are hardly the first political movement to become furious with the Supreme Court. Conservatives spent decades despising decisions handed down during the Warren Court era. Many conservatives considered those rulings deeply misguided and politically transformative.

Yet the answer wasn’t simply, “Let’s keep adding justices until we get the number we want.”

That restraint matters.

Because constitutional government requires something that Washington seems to have misplaced somewhere between the fundraising email and the cable-news segment: the ability to lose without destroying the institution that defeated you.

I know that’s an increasingly radical concept in modern politics.

But it shouldn’t be.

Elections have winners and losers. Court cases have winners and losers. Legislation has winners and losers. That’s the system.

You don’t get to flip over the table because you didn’t like the result.

And if you do flip over the table, don’t be shocked when the other side eventually picks it up and uses it against you.

The most frightening part isn’t that politicians want to change the Supreme Court.

Politicians have always wanted power.

The frightening part is how casually some are beginning to treat the guardrails themselves as disposable whenever those guardrails produce an outcome they don’t like.

That should alarm every American, regardless of party.

Because once political victory becomes more important than institutional legitimacy, there is no logical stopping point.

Today it’s the Supreme Court.

Tomorrow it’s the Senate rules.

Then the Electoral College.

Then whatever other constitutional mechanism happens to stand between a political movement and what it wants.

And once every rule becomes negotiable, there are no rules.

So I’ll return to my fifth-grade playground.

Heads I win.

Tails you lose.

It was childish then.

It is dangerous now.

Because on a playground, destroying the rules ruins recess.

In a constitutional republic, destroying the rules can ruin the republic.

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