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The lure of divided government
June 12, 2008
Robert Samuelson’s new column on the candidates is very good, as usual.
For the party faithful, this is a sweet moment. They have their candidates and, whatever the obstacles, can still imagine victory in November. But the rest of us ought to remember that the politics of winning and governing often collide. The first involves maximizing popularity. The second requires farsighted choices that ultimately benefit the country but may initially hurt a president’s approval ratings. What have we learned about the candidates’ capacity for governing? Enough, I think, to temper the excitement.
He finds plenty of fault in both candidates, and concludes by reminding readers of the case for divided government.
For me, McCain does have one provisional and accidental advantage. By most appraisals, the Republicans will get slaughtered in the congressional elections, and I have a visceral dislike of one-party government. It didn’t work well under Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Divided government doesn’t ensure good government, but it may limit bad government by checking the worst instincts of both parties.
It is a point that my National Journal colleague Jonathan Rauch has argued persuasively from time to time. See this piece from 2006 [pdf]:
In a complicated world, good policy is usually bound to be eclectic; in an unpredictable world, successful policy-making depends on correcting errors. Eclecticism comes from compromise, error-correction from coherent criticism. One-party rule seems to short-circuit both mechanisms.
Politicians compromise because they have to, not because they like to. Divided government forces them to compromise as a fact of daily life. Although compromise does not guarantee sound or successful policy-making, it does draw both parties toward the center and produce bipartisan buy-in. It’s no coincidence that divided government produced the 1986 tax reform and the 1996 welfare reform, the great reforms of their respective eras.
Two-party rule also helps to marginalize partisan extremists and curb ideological excess. The Democratic Congress moderated President Reagan’s unsustainable tax cuts and defense buildup, safeguarding his legacy. In the Clinton era, divided government produced a miraculously frugal fiscal detente. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both succeeded not in spite of divided government but because of it.
The idea is not yet much talked about in 2008. The Democrats seem certain to rule Congress with expanded majorities, yet I don’t see many independents (Samuelson aside) arguing that this inclines them to prefer McCain. Come to think of it, why am I not (yet) advancing that argument myself? Good question. I’ll have to get back to you.
I think the reason that independents haven’t flocked to McCain under the banner of divided government may be the Supreme Court.
The two parties may be able to restrain each other’s more extreme tendencies on legislation. But the Supreme Court is seriously out of whack. The best hope of balance in the third branch of government is Democratic control of the other two.
Posted by: Bob | June 13th, 2008 at 5:41 am | Report this commentWith all due respect to Clive Crook (and none at all to Robert Samuelson, whose repeated and gratuitous stereoptyping of Latino immigrants as being nothing but poor, uneducated and a drain on the US economy puts him almost in a class with America’s most famous and best paid professional demagogue, Lou Dobbs), it would be hard to imagine a worse idea than that of a “divided government” that puts the Democrats in control of Congress and keeps the Republicans in the White House.
First, this type of “divided government” would lead to “gridlock”, frustrating any attempt to pass progressive legislation benefiting the middle class (what is left of it) or the less advantaged, because of the White House veto power. Recent examples are the failure to extend health insurance coverage to millions of less well off children and the failure to extend unemployment benefits.
All attempts to undo the damage caused by the current administration laissez-faire refusal to regulate against the uncontrolled greed that is destroying our environment, our mortgage markets and our healthcare system, would fail if a Republican is in the White House, unless the Democrats gain a unified, veto proof majority, which is unlikely to happen.
Second, the White House already has enormous power, over which Congress has little oversight, in terms of regulation, foreign policy, the Pentagon and, as a practical matter, even the power to make war. Under Bush/Cheney, the White House has claimed the illegal and unconstitutional powers of a “Unitary Executive”, accountable to no one except the “Great Decider” himself.
In addition, the White House has control over the news, the national debate, and through government secrecy so extensive that it might compare with Russia or China, the information available to Congress. It also has an unrivalled ability to politicize federal agencies and intimidate critics. Look at the Justice Department scandals that led to the resignations of Rove and Gonzales, and the scandal over the leak ivolving Valerie Plame that led to the conviction (to be followed by the pardon next January, without fail), of former White House aide Lewis Libby.
Therefore, leaving the Republicans in control of the White House would not really be “divided government” at all. It would merely continue the current trend to authoritarian rule under an increasingly powerful excecutive which regards the legislative branch as, in Vice President Cheney’s reported words, nothing more than “irritating gnats”.
Finally, what greater proof do we need of the danger to our democracy of leaving the Republicans in control of the White House than yesterday’s Supreme Court Court decision in the Guantanamo detainees’ case? Habeas Corpus, which has been around for some 800 years as a protection against unlimited power, survived by only one vote. The same can be said for American freedom itself.
If elected, McCain has pledged to appoint more Supreme Court justices in the mold of Scalia, whose frightening dissent yesterday would place the uncontrolled will of the president above the constitution. As Nixon once said, “If the president does it, it’s legal”.
There are even unsettling echoes in this dissent of the governmental structure in Germany between 1933 and 1945, when the will of the Fuhrer was the law of the land. Just substitute “Commander in Chief” and you have the Republican vision for America. This is the last thing that we need in the White House for four more years, for eight more years, or, perhaps, something not unthinkable, of a Republican president for life (and I am not just referring to the life of John McCain).
Posted by: algasema | June 13th, 2008 at 3:08 pm | Report this commentSorry, I think I got carried away in terms of syntax. I should have written “a Republican president for life, not “of a Republican president for life”.
Posted by: algasema | June 13th, 2008 at 3:16 pm | Report this commentTo be really correct, I should have said “during the term of a Republican president for life.” I also apologize for my typo in misspelling “involving”.
Posted by: algasema | June 13th, 2008 at 6:55 pm | Report this commentThe Supreme Court decided in favor of Guantanamo Detainees (sort of) yesterdeay, yet, Roger as the voice of the Left on this blog declares that is not good enough, as there was some “frightening dissent” from Judge Scalia (who I have a hard time classifying as Right or Left from his record).
I keep wondering what is so frightening about dissent that makes (Sen. Obama and) the Left want to unify us all the time? Perhaps some healthy disagreement keeps the government in check a bit.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | June 14th, 2008 at 9:34 pm | Report this commentJBP, disagreement over whether America should remain a democracy or should become a fascist dictatorship, as it would if the president is given the unlimited power to jail and torture anyone he pleases, either without charges, or without anything remembling a fair trial for those charged, is not “healthy disagreement”.
Nor are liberals like myself the only people who are concerned about the eclipse of our basic freedoms under Bush/Cheney. Many decent Republicans, such as Senator Arlen Spector, former Congressman Bob Barr, and even the pre-pander, pre-sellout, pre - flip-flop version of John McCain himself, have also been concerned about the Bush/Cheney march toward dictatorship. Are they “lefties” too?
Your views on how the “military commissions” that cowardly Democrats in Congress were bullied into accepting under pressure from Bush/Cheney scare tactics are any different from the “people’s courts” in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and in the Soviet Union during the 1930’s would also be interesting, to say the least.
As for Justice Scalia’s dissent, I have concededly not read it yet in full. But the excerpts quoted in the papers seem to rely on two arguments:
1) More innocent people will allegedly be killed if the US continues to uphold an 800 year-old protection against despotism, habeas corpus, that is specifically written into our Constitution.
2) The detainees are aliens being held on “foreign soil”, and are therefore not entitled to the protection of the US Constitution.
The first argument is not legal interpretation; it is nothing but fearmongering, of the type that dictators and their supporters have used to justify power grabs from time immemorial. It is, in effect, saying that if we don’t scrap the Constitution, people will die. Then why have a constitution at all? Why not just turn the country over to the infallible wisdom and tender mercies of a “Dear Leader”, or closer to home, a “Great Decider”?
The second argument is pure sophistry, given that the US has a 99-year lease to, and 100% control over, Guantanamo.
Posted by: algasema | June 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm | Report this commentJBP, perhaps the best way of responding to your comment is to agree that disagreement in a democracy is, of course healthy. But to disagree of whether a country should continue to be a democracy is not. Habeas corpus rights are fundamental to US democracy. Therefore, any attempt to scrap them, no matter what the pretext, is more than unhealthy, It is a clear and present danger to our freedom.
Posted by: algasema | June 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm | Report this commentApologies: I meant “disagree about”, not “disagree of”.
Posted by: algasema | June 15th, 2008 at 3:02 pm | Report this commentMcCain would be another Schwarzenegger, on a national scale: pushing here and there for reforms that the Dem ajority is too corrupt or feeble to embrace, but all in all governing like a domestic liberal-to-centrist and a foreign policy hawk. This is the way Nixon governed, and it gave us– contrary to popular belieg– a surprisingly successful record on domestic issues and a poor record on foreign ones. It was Nixon who created the EPA and moved the nation forward on a variety of race and poverty related issues. McCain could easily do the same on a set of domestic issues that the Dems have been too stupid to seize: 1) scrapping race-based affirmative action and replacing it with class-based affirmative action (plus means-tested school vouchers); 2) a grand energy bargain that entails more drilling off the coasts along with more $$ for alternative sources; 3) targeted intervention incl tax breaks for working families with school-age children; 4) ending the importation of a second underclass of semi-literates from abroad– and a program designed to aid and help create jobs in Mexico for desperate Mexican campesinos who, we were told in 1996, would benefit sufficiently from NAFTA to remain in Mexico rather than immigrate here and swamp the low-end US labor market and US social service provision in the border states.
McCain can do all of these things. Obama almost certainly will do none of these things. A pity McCain’s incompetent advisors can’t see that this kind of Schwarzenegger-style appeal is his best shot at victory.
Posted by: thibaud | June 16th, 2008 at 7:57 am | Report this commentthibaud, you are right that Nixon, unlike Bush, did not try to dismantle the New deal safety net and, to some extent even expanded on it. Of course, Vietnam was a disaster, but Nixon deserves some foreign policy credit for beginning the process, unpopular at that time, of opening up China.
But what is there that is “centrist” in the anti-immigrant, anti-environmental, pro big oil agenda suggested in your comment? More to the point, how would you expect McCain to win by running as Lou Dobbs on the first of these issues and George W. Bush on the others?
Posted by: algasema | June 16th, 2008 at 3:38 pm | Report this comment