President Bill Clinton has suffered a significant legislative setback over the defeat of his "economic stimulus package" in the U.S. Senate - a defeat that was accomplished by his Republican Party foes not by vote, but by filibuster. History (and next year's congressional elections) will determine whether or not the newly arrived Democratic Chief Executive's plan for America's economic recovery was derailed by this tactic. For a man whose self-admitted ambition to be a politician has been expressed since his teens, Bill Clinton appears to have been taken completely by surprise by this opposition strategy. He should not have been: the filibuster has been a fixture in democratic debate almost since the beginning of the republic.
The filibuster is a delaying tactic, a means whereby a group of legislators who are certain of defeat on an issue if it is called to a vote use various means to prevent that event from occurring. The origins of the filibuster emerged from the acrimonious debates of the ancient Roman Senate; bringing reasoned debate (and effective rule) to a crunching halt, the filibuster was one of the factors allowing the emergence of a strong Consul branch of the Roman Republic, later to fortify its power in the form of the Emperor's position: thus, while the Roman Senate debated or filibustered its time away, the executive branch ruled.
The U.S. Senate obtained the use of the filibuster in 1801 when it adopted Thomas Jefferson's Manual on Parliamentary Practice: whether by design (Jefferson was an ardent admirer of classic democracy) or laxity, the Manual omitted provision for moving the previous question which the House of Representatives had already adopted. Moving the previous question is a parliamentary procedure whereby, if a debate is going on too long, it can be cut short by a request to vote immediately on the question. At the time of the Manual's adoption, the upper house of Congress was comprised of...