I want to put in my two cents on James Joyner’s observations about our broken federal system. He attributes the problems to a loss of collegiality among the members of Congress:
What’s lacking is basic respect for ones colleagues. It’s simply impossible to work together to find common ground. And yet Senators are openly contemptuous of one another and of the opposite-party leadership even in casual conversations with reporters.
I’ve remarked on that myself, noting how it parallels similar changes in the practice of law but I think there are more basic problems. As both of our two major political parties drift away from being the “catch all” parties they’ve always been to becoming programmatic parties fundamental conflicts in goals would seem to be baked in.
But I don’t think it stops there. I don’t know where to date the change but I do know it hasn’t always been this way. I pointed it out here more than 15 years ago. The Democrats had changed from being the other party to being an opposition party. I believe now as I said then I don’t believe there is room in our system for an opposition party. The Democrats were an opposition party to the Bush Administration; the Republicans an opposition party to the Obama Administration; the Democrats were then an opposition party to the Trump Administration; now the Republicans are an opposition party to the Biden Administration. Maybe it all goes back to Bill Clinton’s impeachment but it doesn’t go back any farther than that. I note that there was bipartisan support for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
And I see other things as well like a basic lack of understanding about how you gain support from people. When people help to build something, they’re more likely to support it. When you confront them with a finished piece of legislation which they have had no role in writing, reject the possibility of any amendments, and the only choices are take it or leave it, you are not building support.
Is that a cause or an effect of the loss of collegiality to which James points? I think it’s more a loss of political skills which I attribute to the engineering of majorities through the creation of safe districts and exploitation of targeted advertising.
“Maybe it all goes back to Bill Clinton’s impeachment but it doesn’t go back any farther than that.”
Maybe???
The argument against is that there were still a few pieces of legislation enacted after that with bipartisan support, as I noted in the body of the post. That suggests that the Clinton impeachment didn’t poison the well but other factors were also necessary but at the very least it played a role which is what I was trying to say.
The beginning of the change dates to the George McGovern Presidential campaign in 1972. That’s when the socialists began the take over of the Democrat Party and the expulsion/flight of conservative Democrats. That’s when the Democrat South began the transition to the Republican South.