I’ve been saying for some time that the present day resembles nothing in American history so much as the run-up to the American Civil War. Now there’s another way it’s like that earlier time. David Faris at The Week observes that the 115th Congress is by most reasonable measures the least productive in 164 years:
Just six months ago, it looked like the Republican Party was about to go on a legislative blitzkrieg, shredding law after law passed by the Obama administration. ObamaCare would be vaporized and replaced with a nickel rattling inside an empty Mountain Dew can. Dodd-Frank was sure to be tossed aside for a transparent giveaway to Wall Street. And Republicans would pass their regressive tax reform, their perplexing border-adjustment tax, and so much more. The GOP hadn’t held total power in American politics since 2006, and the party had become much more conservative in the interim. And instead of George W. Bush, a man who recognized at least some theoretical limits on free market fundamentalism, the new Congress would work with a sub-literate tabula rasa named Donald Trump, a man who could probably be persuaded to inject himself with experimental medication if an important-seeming person whispered “do it” in his ear.
But a funny thing happened on the way to libertarian utopia. Indeed, it turns out that the GOP-controlled Congress can’t seem to pass any meaningful laws at all. Either they have forgotten how, or the divisions in their own increasingly radicalized caucus are proving too difficult to surmount. Whatever the explanation, thus far these GOP legislators are on track to be the least productive group since at least the Civil War.
Now, okay, technically the Ryan-McConnell 115th Congress is so far actually a bit more active than recent Congresses, if you measure by the 43 laws that President Trump has adorned with his garish signature. Obama was at 40 at this point in 2009. George W. Bush had signed even fewer midway through 2001. But sheer number is not the best way to think about how much is being achieved. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump pointed out, a majority of the bills signed by Trump thus far have been one page long, meaning many are just symbolic or ceremonial.
Some of this very brief legislation has also been passed under the Congressional Review Act, a previously obscure statute that allows Congress to nullify recently enacted federal regulations. The CRA had been used just once before Trump took office, and yet 14 of the 43 bills signed into law by the president have been CRAs. Most of them roll back Obama-era protections against various kinds of transparent evildoing, like preventing coal mining within 100 feet of streams. They’re not meaningless, but the Voting Rights Act they are not.
If you cast your mind back 164 years there are other parallels. That was the last year that the Whigs were a serious force in the Senate. By 1854 the newly formed Republican Party had secured three seats and it was downhill from there on for the Whigs. The Democrats held a one seat majority in the Senate. Their majority in the House was much larger.
There they outnumbered the Whigs more than two to one.
Here’s my question. If the parallels are as strong as they seem, which of today’s parties is today’s Whigs?
Which party? Both maybe, neither maybe.
(1) Let me point to a thing on the horizon: people try to “optimize” their babies, particularly those in affluent families. Fetuses diagnosed with Tay-Sachs Syndrome get aborted a lot, for example. And we’re getting better at reading the genetic code and predicting out what sort of ailments or conditions unborn children might develop; we’re also developing the skills to modify embryos.
So it’s a reasonable guess that by say 2030 or maybe earlier a couple wishing to have a child might consult with doctors beforehand and eliminate embryos that seem predisposed toward Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia and Downs Syndrome and hemophilia and other characteristics. And then we might imagine couples adding a few attributes — slightly longer lifespans, for example, a couple extra inches of height, another 5 or 10 or 20 IQ points. And let these little extras mount up over a dozen generations or so.
So here’s a fun question: this will cost something, maybe a hundred thousand bucks or so per baby. Who pays for that in America? Who gets designer babies and who doesn’t? I can imagine this becoming “routine” healthcare in much of Europe, maybe in a good hunk of China, certainly in Singapore, and a commonplace practice among the social elite in Russia and any place else with a wealthy ruling class. So what should America do? Imagine you’re a Democrat or a Republican politician.
2. Currently the world has 7 billion inhabitants, 2 billion of them (roughly) in Africa. Turn of the century, it’s estimated the world will have 11 billion inhabitants, 5 or 6 billion of them African. What sort of foreign policy do you recommend for the US, if you’re a Republican or Democratic politician?
3. Before we get to the end of the century, of course, we’ll have a great deal of fun — possibly — while the Chinese use their wealth and population and scientific strengths to supplant the US as the world’s Maximum Leader. Maybe we’ll be there by 2050. And after a generation of so, there’s a fair chance the even more populous and conceivably richer Indians will attempt to supplant the Chinese. Which side should the US take in these developments? Should Republicans and Democrats behave in bipartisan fashion? Wouldn’t it be really great fun our parties backed different sides, so our position as a nation switched convulsively after every election?
Right now the real message of Republicans is “Hate The Democrats” and Democrats don’t have much but “Hate The Republicans.” Is there a good reason to keep this up for another century?
Hopefully both of them.
But the reality is that the parties have entrenched themselves into our political system much more than the pre-civil war era. All the mechanisms of our democracy are controlled by partisan players and over time they’ve built up a large institutional bulwark. Third party performance is the last election was probably inconsequential despite two divisive and unpopular candidates and despite all the problems with the parties internally. We’ve had these two parties for a very long time and people don’t seem to understand there are and could be other choices. There is also the constant propaganda that voting for a third party is, at best, a “wasted” vote and at worse, enabling evil (had someone actually tell me that this past election).
I really really wish it would come to pass, but I don’t think either party will go the way of the Whigs anytime soon.
I don’t have to vote for a third party to enable evil. I live in Illinois.
Haha!