balance of power in the senate

[dwid]

I've had this little theory going for a while. Tell me what you think.

It seems like as long as I've been alive, the power in Congress has belonged to the opposing party to the incumbent president. This provides a ready excuse for the president to always whine about the deadlock he faces when trying to get through legislation, so there is a ready-made excuse when nothing major ever changes and nothing gets done. My theory was in peril with the newly elected president and then, voila, we see an impromptu change in the delicate balance of power in the senate.

I just want to know what the rest of you think about this. It reminds me of Jello Biafra, who once said in America we really have a one party system masquerading as a two party system.

[curwin]

You must be the youngest poster on the board...



...since from 1992-1994 Clinton had a Democratic Congress to work with.

[hajario]

Your premise is incorrect. Clinton had a Democratic Congress when he was first elected and his (Hillary's) health care thing didn't go through.

Bush Jr. couldn't get his tax plan through a (barely) Republican Congress due to the opposition of a handful of GOP Congressmen.

In genreal though it does make a nice excuse. I agree whole heartedly with Jello's statement. Despite all of the rhetoric, the difference between the Dems and the GOP is incremental.

Haj

[Whack-a-Mole]

Despite all of the rhetoric, the difference between the Dems and the GOP is incremental.

I dunno...when I hear this names like Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan spring to mind. These are hardly paragons of a centrist view.

The Congress represents a spectrum of views. A few are off in the wings (left or right) while the majority fall somewhere in the middle. Sort of a bell curve if you graphed it out.

Saying that we really only have a 'one party system masquerading as a two party system' is misleading. It makes it sound as if some scam is being perpetrated on the American people.

Most Americans fall somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. Even my die-hard republican father has a few reservations with the Republican platform as a whole (ok...a very few but there are some points he disagrees on). That our elected representatives tend to reflect this distribution is as it should be.

Would you want a government composed of fascists and tree huggers exclusively?

As to the President whining about not being able to achieve his policies because of a Congress dominated by the opposing party I say you play the hand dealt to you. Trying to pass off blame for everything wrong in the country to the opposing party is purely normal politics. Stuff like this has probably been happening since we had tribal councils in a hunter-gatherer society 5,000 years ago.

As cynical as I am of politicians I do believe a President enters office with the idea of actually doing something good for the country (whether or not his ideas actually are good or not is a matter for another debate). I don't believe he hopes for an opposing Congress with which to pass off blame on when things go wrong.

[dolphinboy]

There's something to be said for gridlock though... we never see the huge swings in government policies that occur in other countries that have parliments.... where a single party has control over everything for a certain period of time. When Labor is in power in Britain, for example, things change dramatically from when the Conservatives werein power.

I actually like goverment gridlock when things are going well since it maintains the status quo and neither the left nor the right get to move things off center too much. Anything that does get passed in Congress is by definition middle of the road. When things aren't going well and we need to have change then gridlock can be problematic.... but in my lifetime we've had more good times than bad.

[hajario]

Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole

I dunno...when I hear this names like Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan spring to mind. These are hardly paragons of a centrist view.

Of course there are extremist nutbags on either side. By the way, Buchanan is no longer a Republican. He became a member of the Reform Party a couple of years ago because the GOP was too centrist! Strom Thurmond would have been a better example along with Jesse Jackson on the other side.

I still contend that on the whole there is very little practical difference between the two parties. I did not say that this is necessarily a bad thing and dolphinboy has provided an excellent argument about why this can be a good thing. I just find it funny to find people here in the US who think that their party is virtuous and the other side is no less than satanic. I find them both to be mediocre at best.

Haj

[dwid]

While I respect what dolphinboy is saying, I feel like this stability has been pretty well maintained for too long. Didn't Thomas Jefferson say that we should have a revolution every 50 years in this country. We've invested in stability, but at what cost?

Anyway, I realize that my original statement is a bit of an exaggeration, but the 2-party thing is so often used as a primary excuse for not getting anything done. A presidential candidate can have all the good intentions in the world, but they generally submit themselves to the will of their party once in office anyway. Makes me think that maybe we should consider straight ticket voting as a matter of course in this country. At least that would remove the illusion of a presidential candidate whose platform differs from that of his party.

[AHunter3]

Haj:

Despite all of the rhetoric, the difference between the Dems and the GOP is incremental.

Or sometimes excremental.