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pub notes
Government Is No Longer Dull
TEACHING POLITICAL SCIENCE MUST BE A LOT MORE EXCITING THESE DAYS
By Pete McCommons pete@flagpole.com
One long-ago summer, I taught a political
science course at UGA and tutored some
football players in the same subject at
night. Most of the players were from the
Pennsylvania coal fields, an old UGA tra
dition when so many homegrown football
players, regardless how talented, could not
be signed because of their skin color.
The course covered the structure of gov
ernment, and it was kind of like teaching
architecture or geometry. You had the three
branches of government—the executive,
the legislative and the judicial—and there
were checks and balances to make sure
one branch didn’t
dominate the other,
and it was all based
on the Constitution,
written by a bunch of
white men in a room
in Philadelphia in
ancient times. It was
all really abstract.
We didn’t hear much
about the govern
ment in real life. We
might get excited
during presidential
elections, but oth
erwise, there was no
24-hour cable news
cycle, no Facebook,
no email appeals for
campaign funds. You
just had a vague idea
that the government
was up there in Washington, and you kind
of knew what it did, but who cared?
My job was to make them care enough
to be able to pass the course. That was espe
cially difficult for the football players, who
were sent there to help them keep their
grades up for football. They were not inter
ested in the government. How could I blame
them, since hardly anybody else was? I can
see in retrospect
that I should have
grabbed some chalk
and diagrammed the
government like a
football play, but I didn’t think of it. All I
remember is their blank stares as I tried to
pump some excitement into the separation
of powers.
I hadn’t realized yet that I was never
going to make a political science teacher,
but I think maybe the realization began
during those summer nights when I wished
just as hard as the players that we were
somewhere else, talking about other things
with other people. I heard later that they all
got good enough grades to remain eligible,
so there’s that.
These days, I think how exciting it must
be to teach political science. Our news all
day, every day, is dominated nonstop by the
government and especially by the head of
the executive branch. He is manipulating
the members of the legislative branch to
appoint a member of the judicial branch.
Members of the legislative branch not
too long ago impeached the head of the
executive branch. During that process, the
Constitution was constantly evoked as if it
were actually a living document after all.
Now, suddenly we’re trying to under
stand the order of succession if the head of
the executive becomes incapacitated and
how his inability to continue would affect
the imminent election.
I explained to those football players the
fundamental right of voting, which is such
a ho-hum deal that half the country doesn’t
bother, but they would have been shocked
to find out that their votes might not get
counted, might not get delivered, might be
changed by Russian bots.
Those guys I tutored were accustomed to
Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy,
and they were just becoming acquainted
with Lyndon B. Johnson; Richard M.
Nixon was yet to come. How could I have
explained Donald J. Trump to them? How
could I have prepared them for the effects
of a president ignorant of the Constitution
who disrupts the impartiality of the judi
ciary, intimidates
one branch of
Congress and ignores
the other, fills the
executive branch
with cronies without the advice and consent
of the Senate, ignores a worldwide pan
demic, denies climate change, encourages
racial division, exacerbates income dispar
ities, undermines our elections, lies con
stantly, attacks the free press, consorts with
despots, uses the government to enrich
his family, denigrates our military, attacks
our allies, cancels treaties, criminalizes
immigration, despoils our natural resources
and encourages through his own example
the decline of civil discourse and the rise of
boorishness and bullying in our public life.
Teaching political science must be a lot
more exciting these days since the separa
tion of powers, the emolument clause, the
powers of the executive, etc. fill everyday
conversation and the Electoral College is
no longer assumed to play football. On the
other hand, poli-sci profs have to take into
consideration that some of their students
are armed—another argument for virtual
learning. ©
3 BRANCHES of U.S. GOVERNMENT
Legislative
(makes laws)
—— Congress
Executive
(carries out laws)
L 3N_NL Representatives
Cabinet
Judicial
(interprets laws)
- wjw Supreme Court
Other
‘ Federal Courts
We didn’t hear much about
the government in real life.
(OQ)
ZACHARY
PERRY
STATE
SENATE
WN
JOHNSON
STATE
SENATE
MOKAH
JOHNSON
STATE
HOUSE
6 FLAGPOLE.COM | OCTOBER 7, 2020
USA.GOV