The film took an obscure Senate rule and romanticized it in a way that made people think the filibuster was a commonly used tactic, and an inherent part of the Senate. It is not. In fact, it is directly contrary to what the framers of the Constitution intended.
In Federalist No. 58, defending the Constitution against supermajority requirements in all but a few constitutionally-defined circumstances, Madison wrote:
"It has been said that more than a majority ought to have been required for a quorum; and in particular cases, if not in all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision. That some advantages might have resulted from such a precaution, cannot be denied. It might have been an additional shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial measures. But these considerations are outweighed by the inconveniences in the opposite scale.
In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences."
And in Federalist 22, Hamilton identifies supermajority requirements as one of the principal causes of dysfunction in the Articles of Confederation:
"To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. ... The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.”
Contrary to the way its supporters try to frame it, the filibuster does not encourage compromise, especially when the minority party employs it on virtually every piece of legislation that comes before it. At that point, it is nothing more than a tool for the minority to exercise a de facto veto power over anything the majority might try to enact. It was like that for the eight years of the Obama administration, and it will be like that during the Biden administration if it s not eliminated.
The filibuster is an anti-democratic, extra-constitutional blight on the Senate. Created by racists (specifically by John C. Calhoun of South to protect Southern slavery from federal civil rights legislation in the 1840s), it has no place in our system and must be abolished!
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