POTENTIAL LOOMING LESSON

We are at the eve of the national election. And what would a former civics/government teacher “instruct” you to do? Vote. It is your civic duty. And, as a person promoting federalist values, I will point out that among the most important charges one derives from a federalist perspective is the one that encourages citizens to participate in the processes by which public policy is determined. Voting is right up there among those participatory activities.

And in this cycle I would also point out that lessons will be derived from the outcome of this election. In terms of federalist values, I would say one of the most important lessons is whether or not obstruction will be rewarded. Since the 2010 election, many have observed that the central government has fallen way short of what it should have accomplished given the challenges the nation has been facing. The question is: why is it that this government has not been able to act effectively? Is it because we have a President who is unwilling or unable to engage the opposition party so that the necessary compromises could have been struck? Or is it because that opposition party has taken on such an uncompromising posture that no president of an opposition party would have been able to work with such a group? What is it?

Answers to this question vary. Naturally, the variance falls along partisan lines. An academic view of what has been happening is offered by two political scientists, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein. In their book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks, the main conclusion is that one party has been measurably – not totally – more responsible for the resulting obstruction than the other. Their argument can be summarized by the following:

The Democrat's devastating setback in the 2010 midterm election, in which they lost six Senate seats and sixty-three in the House, produced a Republican majority in the House dominated by right-wing insurgents determined to radically reduce the size of government and the role of government. What followed was an appalling spectacle of hostage taking – most importantly, the debt ceiling crisis – that threatened a government shutdown and public default, led to a downgrading of the country's credit, and blocked constructive action to nurture an economic recovery or deal with looming problems of deficit and debt.¹

This general conclusion can be supported by several measurable factors; for example, the number of filibusters by Senate Republicans which killed legislative action in a vast number of areas. By instigating filibusters, the majority needs more than 50 % of the vote to get a bill passed in that chamber; they need sixty of the hundred members to agree.² And in addition to this situation in the Senate, if one house of Congress, as is the case currently in the House of Representatives, is controlled by an opposition party to the President and they uniformly decide that either their agenda is to be followed or nothing gets through, then that majority can stall all action by the federal government unless the President and the other party in Congress totally cave-in. Since the Republicans do not control the Senate, the legislation they pass in the House has no chance of passing the other chamber. The record has been clear; it is the Republicans in the House who have not been willing to compromise with the Senate and sufficiently accommodate the principled positions of the Democratically controlled Senate. For example, the Republican have endorsed legislation that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, a health provider servicing low income women. This is a policy the Democrats in the Senate cannot agree to due to their principled position on the issue. I would submit that on other issues the Democrats in the Senate have supported legislation that in many cases has incorporated Republican ideas to no avail.

What this development reflects is the increasing strength of ideologically pure politicians from the conservative right. Through a variety of strategies, these law-makers have rejected any sense of compromise. The problem is that our system demands compromise in order to work. Without it, there is inability of government to act. That is, neither major party can muster the votes to be successful in getting what it wants done and its ideological bias dismisses any giving-in that might result in a compromised position. Consequently, little or nothing gets done.

Of course, the way out of this situation is for the members of each party to be willing to give in a bit in order to get some of what they want. Or they can actively seek out the common ground where they and their opposition can agree on minor points that can then lead to more encompassing agreements. In short, they can find a way to compromise. Usually, in our legislative history, coalitions have formed on particular issues; that is, coalitions that can find enough agreement to get a piece of legislation through. You can have one set of lawmakers from across party lines form a majority over one concern and another set of them over a different concern. But in order to work this way, we need practical politicians looking for a deal, not ideological politicians who follow a set of predetermined positions no matter what. This is not to say that they need to be unprincipled, but that they can actively look for those angles among proposals where everyone gets some of what he/she wants, but not all; where each side understands that it will not sacrifice the good for what it perceives the perfect to be. In addition, tangentially, some have accused the Republicans of not only being ideological, but also hell bent on depriving the President of any meaningful legislative victories that would aid him in winning re-election this Tuesday. This latter charge might be considered a more partisan accusation.

If we had a parliamentary system, such as in Great Britain, then ideological parties, by gaining the majority of the parliament, would be able to get their agenda through. Such systems are noted by the strict discipline party leaders are able to maintain among their members in the parliament. With the majority of votes in the parliament, they get through what they want. The minority is pretty much left out in the cold, limited to criticizing the policies the majority is putting into effect and preparing for the next election. But in our system, if one party maintains such discipline – as the Republicans have been able to do – they can muck up the works.

Let me be clear on how our system has been stuck. There are two possible ways an effective obstruction can be accomplished. If a party is in the minority in the Senate, it can, with few exceptions, block any action by the use of the filibuster assuming it has at least forty-one votes. The other way is if the disciplined party has control of only one of the two houses of Congress, like the Republicans currently have control of the House of Representatives. They simply refuse to compromise on any pending legislation. They are able to pass proposals in their chamber, but are not able to pass them in the other house. Both of these conditions exist today. Republicans control the House of Representatives and they have forty-seven votes in the Senate. Either we need the parties to be less disciplined and more practical or we need to change to a parliamentary system in order to get a more responsive government. There is no practical hope for this latter option; it would call for a major constitutional change.

So, if the Republicans win this election, what is the lesson for the Democrats? If obstruction pays off, as in the form of a Republican win, wouldn't it be rational for the other party, the Democrats, to adopt the same strategy? I think this is what I fear the most. I will be a highly interested viewer come Tuesday night (and probably Wednesday morning) and my main interest will be focused on whether we, the voters, reward or punish an obstructionist strategy.

1Mann, T. E. and Ornstein, N. J. (2012). It's even worse than it looks: How the American constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism. New York, NY: Basic Books. Quotation on p. xii.

2Historically, filibusters have been a rare. During a 60 Minute interview (aired November 4, 2012), Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) makes the claim that Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who was the Democratic leader in the Senate for many years (1951-1961), had to deal with only one filibuster from the opposition party. Sen. Reid then stated that he, as majority leader, has, in more recent years, had to deal with over 200 filibusters. According to CNN, from 2007 to mid 2012, there have been 360 filibusters – a historical record.