I’ve been nibbling around the edges of this point for some time but I think that a major culprit in the difficulties in which we find ourselves is the process that’s being used in Congress these days. The process has been used in legislation that has “succeeded”, e.g. healthcare reform, and in legislation that has “failed”, e.g. energy policy.
Here’s what I think has been happening. Legislation has been essentially a two-step process. The first step is to determine the contours of the end result. The second step is horse-trading among legislators until you’ve got enough votes to pass the legislation.
I don’t think this is a new phenomenon. It may date from the earliest days of the Congress. However, it has some built in assumptions. It assumes that the end result is acceptable to enough legislators that the horse-trading phase can be kept within bounds. As the parties have both increasingly moved in the direction of programmatic parties at the expense of being catch-all parties, that has become increasingly difficult.
And I also think it takes a view of Congress’s work as being something other than a zero-sum game. In the virulently partisan environment of today that’s no longer a good assumption.
Some seem to blame this on compromise but I think that’s precisely the opposite of the problem. What’s been going on isn’t compromise, it’s log-rolling, a completely different phenomenon. Compromise is only possible within the context of shared goals and values and those are becoming increasingly divergent.
I don’t see any easy solutions to this procedural problem. Potential solutions like electing more moderates (who would, presumably, have more commonality than ideological opponents), limiting the scope of bills (which would, presumably provide less opportunity for log-rolling), or starting from the compromise position (at this point so limited as to be virtually meaningless) look decreasingly likely.
I’m afraid that things will need to get much, much worse before they get any better. Not a pleasant prospect.
Moderates are often the worst logrollers of all (see Nelson, Ben). And even compromise bills, such as McCain-Feingold, are often cripplingly flawed and/or built to maintain the interests of insiders. We’d be better off acknowledging that relative comity that existed while Democrats held the South was an historical oddity, and that the party in power should have more control, and therefore more responsibility.
The problem with moderates is that they are politically weak thanks to gerrymandering and thanks to the fact that the Congressional agenda is controlled by the wings of each party.
If an authentic moderate authored a moderate bill, would anybody notice?
Don’t blame moderates for majority authored bills which aim not for solution, but political positioning in the elections to come.
(Neither side votes for moderate or rational solutions right now, and that is our problem.)
Do away with the filibuster. Both sides really do want cover from the other side in case things fail. If a bill is likely going to pass anyway, people can trade votes for changes that modify the bill. As it stands, a unified vote can stop the bill so it is the better political option.
Steve