Over in the debate over the Presidential election, MysterEcks wrote:
I couldn’t disagree more.
It seems to me that when you have the Republicans controlling Congress and a Democrat in the White House (or vice versa) what happens is that Congress, unable to force its agenda past an unwilling President, focuses instead on bringing that President down. Result: partisan witch hunts, and never-ending “investigations” by Congress of every minor mis-step made by the White House.
Another result: No meaningful campaign finance reform will ever be passed so long as one party controls the White House and the other controls Congress. Why? Congress will only pass reforms which favor its party, or will tack on so many partisan riders that the legislation will be doomed to be vetoed.
On the other hand, if you have the same party controlling both the White House and Congress, there is no excuse not to get reform measures on the books.
So in sum: A party split between Congress and the White House leads to deadlock and partisan bickering. One party controlling both means things get done.
I like it that way actualy. But I’m one of those people who thinks less is more.
If you want an objective way of looking at it, look at the things that have gotten done in the past couple of years since we’ve had a republican controlled congress and a democratic president.
If you think that the country has gone to hell, well… then sure I’ll agree. If you think that we’ve actualy made some progress then I guess it could be considered a good thing.
Ultimatly though there are likely too many variables involved to just consider party guidlines. I think we’re starting to see, more than ever (esp. with Gore picking up his running mate) people making choices based on people, and not party affliation… well hopefully anyways.
shrug the indvidual is more imporant than the party.
Parties do have platforms, you know. A common refrain these days is “There’s no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.” Baloney, sez I. There are very real differences in the agenda being pursued by each of the major parties. Voters need to take a close look at the issues, and not vote based on individual personalities.
Having said that, I feel like I’m entitled to a slight hijack. Which is about the pundits and commentators inferring from the election results that give split governments that “the voters wanted it this way”. In reality, the vast majority of the voters have voted for the same party - it’s the small number of swing voters who split their votes who cause this result to come about.
I agree with the OP. People want to assign credit or blame to the government, writ large. How can you do this with the branches divided against each other? Who are you supposed to “kick out” if everyone is more or less in power?
It frustrates me greatly that the only time the Republicans can win the House of Representatives is when Bill Clinton is in the White House. It’s not because of the party I favor, I’m just trying to figure or what, if any, signals the political system is supposed to be getting from the election results. 1972? Huge win for Nixon and the Democrats. 1996? Clinton and the Republicans. Which way to push the country?
Certain dispassionate political scientists say we’re asking too much of the electoral system. Elections aren’t really supposed to influence policy, they’re just supposed to build some sort of tie between the government and the public. They are too blunt of an instrument really to influence policy. I can see what they’re saying - how do you interpret the results of an election vis a vis an issue like offshore drilling? How to calculate inflation? Which foreign conflicts to intervene in, and how? So what if there’s an electoral mandate to Save Social Security, Have a Strong Defense, Balance the Budget, Put Educate First, etc? It doesn’t tell the system anything … it may tell individuals something but it’s likely to tell other individuals the opposite.
One possible remedy to divided governance is to synchronize the terms of Congress and the Presidency. This would stop the mid-term losses of the President’s party, but too many people hate the idea of four-year terms for Representatives, and eight-year terms for Senators (or three-year terms for the President) for it to get serious consideration.
Nothing detrimental happens when you have opposing parties in control of Congress and the Presidency. Congress won’t pass anything too blatently partisian, and the President won’t sign anything partisian from the congress. So the mass of partisian politics gets stuck.
Problem being, even on issues where there is agreement, there isn’t a concensus about how to do something about it. Republicans and Democrats will invariably split on what to do, resulting in either an extremely watered down version of the original bill, or the problem will stand.
Those who don’t like divided government may look forward to the results of the upcoming elections. With both houses of congress so evenly divided, it may well turn out to be “for all the marbles”.
Another disturbing thing that happens when there is a split:
Presidential appointments get held up and derailed over the most trivial matters by a spiteful Congress. This happened to Reagan and Bush when the Democrats were in charge of Congress, and it happened to Clinton with the Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill.
It is a particular problem for the judiciary. While Congress and the President bciker over judicial appointments, judicial vacancies go unfilled. The party in power in Congress delays approving Presidential appointments to the bench, hoping that the next President will be from their own party, and will appoint someone of like mind to the vacant spot.
This results in numerous unfilled vacancies in Federal courts around the country, and a backlog of cases for the overworked Federal judges.
The Republicans in Congress now can vote for a “tax cut” (which turns out to be a tax cut primarily for the wealthy), knowing that Clinton will veto the bill. Then they can go to the public and say: “Clinton vetoed our proposal to cut taxes!”
Meanwhile, maybe Clinton wouldn’t mind cutting taxes, but wants the tax cuts distributed in a different way.
Historical point - the Founding Fathers expected most presidential elections to end up in the House of Representatives, so they expected the presidency and the house of reps to be held be the same party, at least.
Personal opinion - except for the appointment delays, noted below, I don’t see a huge problem with splits. In any event, the appointment delays are a recent phenomenom.
I support a divided government- that is, one party controlling the Congress and the other party controlling the Presidency.
First off- I think people here are making too many assumptions about the unity of parties. IIRC, Clinton had nearly as many problems getting his agenda through a Democratic House and Senate as he has had later through a Republican House and Senate (his first budget was passed only by a tie-breaker vote by Gore; NAFTA; the entire Health Care Reform initiative; etc.)- the problem being that because the ‘party’ is in control of the entire government, everyone expects the ‘party’ to enact all of its promises; but the ‘party’ isn’t completely coherent and in agreement on all of its’ positions. If Bush becomes President and the Repubicans retain control of Congress, I’d be willing to bet that the more reactionary members of Congress try to force Bush to support issues he’d prefer not to touch with a ten-foot-pole.
Second- Such an arrangement deters extremism and demagougery. If one party controls the Congress and the Presidency, what point is there in the opposition trying to actually lead or propose new laws? Any new proposals by the opposition are nearly guaranteed to fail. Therefore, the impetus is for the opposition to either attack the other party constantly and be obstructionists; or to propose ‘pie-in-the-sky’ programs which would never work, but since the bill wouldn’t pass anyways, they can just demagouge on the issues.
Third- Such an arrangement forces cooperation and compromise. Sure, one party could just accuse the other of being a ‘roadblock’ in the way of ‘the voter’s choices’; but any statement like that runs the risk of backfiring- you never know whom the American people might decide are the real roadblocks (see the Republicans in '96 for such an example). Generally, instead, the Congress and the President will work together to try and get something done that each side wants.
Appointment delays aren’t a recent phenomenon. Back in the 1832, after Andrew Jackson was reelected president, Henry Clay, who lost to Jackson and despised him, organized his Whig Party supporters in the Senate to hold up nearly all of his appointments, most importantly that of Roger Taney as Treasury Secretary. Also some diplomatic appointments were held up.
Jackson ended up waiting out Clay and the Whigs (they were actually the National Republicans then) and waited for the Democrats to gain control of the Senate. Then he got his appointments through, but it took about a year.
Personally, I like having the Executive Branch being in one Party’s hands, and the Legislative in another’s. I will paraphrase what I heard George Will say on the subject on TV (paraphrasing because I do not have the actual quote):
“Gridlock is good because hasty, knee-jerk legislation (like gun control laws, flag burning amendments, and so forth) does not get passed with little or no debate. For something to be passed through Congress and not vetoed, there has to be a pretty good consensus on the legislation. Each party also serves a vital role of keeping the other party honest.”
I wouldn’t mind a Government of Gore if Congress was pretty firmly Republican. Likewise a Bureaucracy of Bush, if Congress was Democratic.
Hmm…since my name has been invoked, I should probably say something about all this.
spoke- said:
Certainly that has happened with our last two divided governments–Reagan/Bush v. Democratic Congresses and Clinton v. Republican Congresses. But it can also be argued that in both cases opposition control of Congress kept serious transgressions from being swept under the rug. We are dealing with an instrument of immense power–the federal government. I prefer the operators of that instrument be afraid of the consequenses of stepping over the lines.
Yes…now take the thought a little further. An all-Democratic government could pass “reform” designed to screw the Republicans, while leaving Democratic sources such as organized labor mostly untouched. An all-GOP government could do the same to the Democrats. The situation would end up degenerating into the same kind of thing which happens at the state level with reapportionment every 10 years…but at the Congressional level, the courts won’t interfere.
That’s what frightens me–that things would get done. There are parts of both parties’ announced agendas which I agree with, but there are also parts of both that I regard exactly as I stated in the other thread that you cited: blatant stupidity. I’m willing to accept a slowdown in the good in return for a slowdown in the bad.
Nonsense. The Democrats and Republicans are both mass-based parties with all sorts of divergent opinions. Senator Charles Schumer of New York and the late Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania are/were both Democrats, but they weren’t very close in idiology. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Governor Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey are both Republicans, but by no means of the same type.
Voters need to look at where the individual candidates fit into their party’s announced objectives–their statements, their past performance, etc.
True enough, though it can be debated whether this is always bad. (I voted for Reagan, but I was relieved as could be that the Democrats derailed his appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.)
You will note, however, what I said in the thread you quoted:
It is the Senate which must “advise and consent” to appointments. The situation Reagan had for his first six years–the GOP controlling the White House and the Senate, and the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives–worked reasonably well.
Boris B said:
You are supposedto be able to decide who you want to keep or throw out based on their merits, rather than by using little pictures of donkeys and elephants.
You are assuming the country wants to be pushed to the left or to the right, but I don’t believe it does. The large majority of the people like it just fine in the middle–that’swhat mixed election results signal.
In six of the last eight presidential elections (1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1996) the party which won the White House failed to gain control of at least one house of Congress–your suggestion would have no affect on that. During this same period, only once has the president’s party lost contol of Congress in midterm elections after having it to begin with (1994–the Republicans also lost control of the Senate in the 1986 elections, but the Democrats had already controlled the House), so this isn’t exactly a compelling reason to change anything.
If you reallywant to ensure unified party control of the federal government, you might as well go all the way and propose a parliamentary system. In such a system, a prime minister is elected by Parliament, and therefore at least theoretically has a working majority (or coalition). Most current examples divide the concepts of head of govenment and head of state, with the latter being either a mostly figurehead president or Queen Elizabeth II, but there’s no reason we couldn’t come up with a new form. Of course, there are certain instabilities in many parliamentary systems–such as the government losing votes of confidence and crashing down overnight–but that too could probably be handled with a little creativity. I wouldn’t like it, but maybe some of the others in this thread would.
I don’t agree with your statistics on that one. I think ticket-splitters are a minority (albeit a decisive one a lot of the time)
I suppose compelling is in the eyes of the beholder. In ten of the last 17 Presidential elections, the party which won the White House also ended up controlling both chambers of Congress. In 12 of the last 17, the President’s party ended up with at least one. During this same period, the President’s party lost control of Congress in a mid-term election several times - Truman lost it in 1950, Eisenhower lost it in 1954, Reagan in 1986, and Clinton in 1994. This is to say nothing of mid-term backlashes against the President which don’t transfer the majority, but which do cut into Presidential majorities or increase majorities for the other party.
Ticket-splitters are still a minority, but they are a substantial one, and from everything I see and hear a growing one. People are less and less likely to blindly vote straight party tickets. This strikes me as a goodthing.
I’ll take your word for the stats–I’m doing mine off the top of my head, and I don’t feel like researching the last century worth of elections. (Though I’ll point out off the top of my head that Truman didn’t lose the Democratic Congressional majority in 1950–it was 1946. That was one of the big reasons so many people expected Truman to lose to Dewey in 1948.)
What it all shows is that divided government is becoming increasingly popular.
Yes, it’s something of a tradition for the president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections–not an invariable one, but a common one. Tell me, Boris–do you always cast your votes in midterm elections for the president’s party’s candidates, just to combat divided government?
Divided government, decreased majorities for the party in the White House–this is what the voters choose. You can certainly disapprove of the results if you wish, but schemes to take that choice away from them smack of paternalism.
It always strikes me as funny how people want the Goverment to opperate smooth and efficently when it concerns issues they agree with, but if something passes they don’t like, they wonder why there wasn’t another commitee looking at that before it passed.
The forefathers were not really huge fans of Goverment and I think really did want it difficult for any one side to just romp all over the American laws with thier viewpoints.
If any one issue was so terribly important to the voters then they could vote for everyone running based solely on that one issue and make sure that issue got passed/killed. Since you can’t get everyone to agree on anything like that, nothing gets done most of the time. To me, that is what the founding fathers would have wanted. If unclear, err on the side of doing nothing. Acting just for the sake of acting never leads to good lawas for anyone.
No. I generally vote for the same party at all elections.
Now that the subject has been broached, how about you? Do you vote for the “out” party at every mid-term election?
“Schemes” … loaded word. Yeah, most proposals for electoral reform seem pretty paternalistic to their opponents. I personally don’t worry too much about it. Just anybody any reform proposal can be called paternalistic … why do the people need such-and-such proposal? If they wanted it they would have passed it without your help? And so on.
A fair question. No, I must admit that I don’t–I vote each office and candidate individually, regardless of who is occupying the White House (or the Governor’s Mansion, for state legislative races). I decide which candidates I like best–or, as often happens, which ones I dislike least–and vote that way.
Indeed. And that’s because most “reform” seems intended to stop the voters from ______ (pick a term, any term), which the “reformers” heartily disagree with and don’t think should be permitted. Take your own proposals–the voters keep taking their ire out on the president’s party in midterm elections, and you don’t like it, so you want to stop them. Paternalistic? Looks that way to me.