From an Elections thread:
This is a topic that could lead to an interesting discussion if some informed posters join in. There certainly are differences between the TEA Party caucus and previous conservative caucuses, and Newt Gingrich was accused of breaking norms, but I don’t feel I can explain it that well. Of course, I would love to hear about this raft of broken norms on the Democrats’ side of things, too.
Refusing to hold debate on the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice for the stated purpose of waiting to see which party wins an election that’s nearly a year in the future – that’s a pretty damn big one if you ask me. I would have actually respected it (ever so slightly more) if McConnell had simply said that the Supreme Court has too many justices and that it needs some attrition. But to say that you won’t even hear debate on the qualifications of a nominee is essentially legitimizing the abdication of its constitutional role – not its ‘right’ but its role??? Without looking the Constitution itself at the moment, I believe that the Constitution doesn’t say that the Senate has the right to oppose a nominee; rather it has that the President shall have the power to appoint justices with the advise and consent of the senate. In other words, yes, if the Senate has a good reason to block a nominee, they can say so on record and ask the president to consider someone else. That’s not at all what happened, and that’s simply because the Republicans were misusing senate power to protect what they perceived to be conservative power on the bench. That is almost certainly unprecedented in modern times. I’ll throw this one out there for starters, but there are others.
It used to be that when we disagreed, we at least started with the same facts. Now conservatives (and to be fair, SOME liberals) filter their news through their trusted outlets and we start the political debate without agreement on factual matters.
I think the tradition of ticket splitting is endangered. I for one used to go down the ballot and research each candidate for each office and make the most informed choices I could, and actually used to vote for some Republicans in lesser offices. I even voted for John Engler for governor. For me, no more. We’ve broken up into the red tribe and the blue tribe.
The impeachment proceedings against Clinton were a huge break from the political norm.
Trump’s election itself broke political norms, of course, and he’s been breaking various conventions himself before and since.
On the Democratic side, Senate Democrats abolishing the filibuster for most nominations was a big one.
The extent to which many Democrats were calling for Trump’s presidential electors to vote against their candidate was quite unusual.
On a less formal level, Democrats have lately been using more profanity in public statements than would have been considered acceptable at one time.
I think the only aspect that was unprecedented here was that it involved a Supreme Court nominee. There are plenty of examples of lower court judges whose nominations were left unacted-upon (Lillian BeVier, Charles Stack, and William Myers are recent ones that come to mind).
A noteworthy one is the transformation of the filibuster from an occasional rarity to “the way things get done”.
During a joint session of Congress, congressman Joe Wilson yells, “you lie!” At the president.
Donald Trump refuses to release his tax returns during the campaign.
Trump holds an event in the White House in which the only press allowed is foreign (Russian)
Trump refuses to divest in any meaningful way from his business
The birther movement
Trump politicized a Boy Scout jamboree
Trump is criticizing his own attorney general in the press and
Trump has repeatedly tried to politicize the military and law enforcement
Which led to the Democrats’ ending filibusters on (non-SC) nominees – getting rid of another “norm!”
The latter is an example of how this “who’s responsible for all this damage to our beloved norms?” question is insufficient. Some norms deserve to die! (I’m thinking of norms like “it’s fine and fun to expresss casual racism when only other white people are around.”) And we should expect all our norms, good and bad, to evolve and change over time.
In other words, breaking or eroding the strength of a norm matters only if the norm was a worthwhile one. All norms are not created equal.
Trump’s disregard for the old “try not to outright lie to the press and the people unless you have a really good reason” norm is dangerous and destructive for reasons that are, I hope, obvious.
On the other hand, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Trump (and before him Obama) changing the norms on how presidents communicate with the people – using more social media. I wouldn’t have a problem with constant tweeting from the Prez, if he wasn’t being such a goldarned lying doofus about it.
This isn’t about the politicians, but everyone else.
I can determine the political leanings of almost all newscasters, actors, comedians and writers with just a few minutes of observing them. To be honest, I can quickly figure out the politics of most people I deal with personally.
In the past, at least as I remember it, politics weren’t as obvious and people didn’t define themselves that way. This “norm” has definitely been lost.
I never knew (or cared) what party Johnny Carson or Walter Cronkite belonged to. And I had no idea which party my parents’ friends favored. Until Facebook, I couldn’t accurately guess the politics of my high-school and college chums. It wasn’t part of our daily lives.
Believe me, I know now.
Lately I’ve noticed that any casual conversation with a woman between 55 and 75 years of age will find its way around to " How much I really hate Donald Trump" in less than 60 seconds. Seriously. Chitchat with clients, strangers in waiting room and checkout lines all end up there if the person I’m talking to is an older woman. In one eye- opening case, it happened when I was chatting with the mother of a member of Trump’s cabinet. Kind of an interesting phenomenon.
I saw this thread and wanted to write a better response, but I haven’t had time yet. Here are my thoughts, as best as I can lay them out in fairly short order:
"Regular" Parliamentary Procedures
60 votes has become the threshold to do virtually anything in the Senate, except for confirmations and that only because they nuked the filibuster for those. Opposition Senators filibuster all the things. John McCain gave a passionate speech in the Senate pleading for a return to “regular order”. AIUI, “regular order” has become something of an endangered species lately. Budgeting has primarily been accomplished through Continuing Resolutions (CRs), instead of following the regular budgeting procedure.
Decline in Bi-Partisanship
Closely related to the above is a general decline in bi-partisanship. Presidents used to be given significantly more deference on nominations by members of the opposing party. Filibusters were a rarity, as were jokes / comments about the death / assassination of the President. I don’t know if it’s a new thing, but seeing Presidents choose to not enforce duly-enacted laws seems new-ish to me (I know, Andrew Jackson did a thing once), or at least more common. And there seems to have been an explosive growth in governance through executive orders and executive actions, a bypassing of Congress of sorts.
Elections Through Recounts or Other Means
I feel like (outside of Chicago) there was a general sense that the will of the people should be respected, but it’s been lost lately. Campaigns these days develop ‘recount strategies’, even before the election, to make sure they’re ready to spring into action and maximize their votes and minimize their opponents in the case of a close election. The Gore campaign famously fought to disqualify military ballots and the Bush campaign went to court to stop the recounts. The MN Senate and WA Governor races were other examples of recount fiascos in my eyes, but perhaps those on the winning side feel everything went perfectly there. Jill Stein’s 3-state recount just happened to be the exact states that would be needed to overturn the results of the 2016 election. Hamilton electors, Hollywood’s plea for Republican defections, Dems in Congress objecting to the certification, are all examples, in my eyes, of a general decline in respect for the “will of the people”.
Criminalization of Politics
Again, closely related to the above, things like the Bill Clinton impeachment, the Duke lacrosse rape case, Freddie Gray’s highly-politicized prosecution, Tom Delay’s prosecution, Trump collusion investigation, etc. there seems to be a goal of turning to criminal charges to try and achieve political success / advance their career that they’re unable to do on their own through the ballot box.
Anyways, those are my thoughts. Feel free to tell me where you believe I’ve gone wrong.
The strength of opposition to Trump’s cabinet picks is another instance, though considering how awful many of his picks are, I find myself in favor of it. In the past, the norm was that the President would generally nominate competent people, and the Senate would generally let him have the advisors he wanted.
The statistics on this are interesting:
G. W. Bush
Cabinet appointments: 33
Confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent: 20 (60%)
Got less than 75 votes: 3 (9%)
Obama
Cabinet appointments: 30
Confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent: 8 (27%)
Got less than 75 votes: 5 (17%)
Trump
Cabinet appointments: 15
Confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent: 0 (0%)
Got less than 75 votes: 10 (67%)
(Stats from https://www.senate.gov/reference/Nominations_and_Treaties.htm)
This. I feel like I am in an alternate universe hearing people talking about how the Grand Tradition of the Senate requires 60 votes for everything in the spirit of “reaching across the aisle” so that every piece of legislation is “bi-partisan.”
That was never the case. Almost everything passed with a simple majority in the Senate. The filibuster was a rarely used tool when the minority party was EXTREMELY opposed to something. Even then it was used sparingly.
The GOP did not filibuster the Clinton economic stimulus plan in the early 90s. The Dems did not filibuster Clarence Thomas.
I had no problem with the filibuster when it was used in this way, a reserve weapon if you will, against truly extreme measures. To require 60 votes for everything stifles any good idea.
Does the Republican decision to ignore the Constitution on various things count? Such as directly telling foreign governments that the President can NOT after all, negotiate treaties?
I think the biggest breaking of political norms in recent years was the US response to 9/11. The Bush administration used the attacks that were organized in Afghanistan to justify an invasion of Iraq. This cynical use of an attack on the US to pursue unrelated political objectives that the American people would not have supported without the 9/11 attacks undermined, perhaps permanently, the assumption that in times of crisis, our political leaders would put politics aside in favor of the common good.
I don’t follow; what do you figure is a case of “ignore the Constitution”-ing?
IIRC, the Constitution says the President can make a treaty “provided two thirds of the Senators present concur”; isn’t that still the Republican position?
Somewhere along the way the dignity of the office of President was lost. Maybe during the Clinton era- I can’t imagine any pre-Clinton president agreeing to perform on a televised variety show. Once upon a time statesmanship was presumed to require some public decorum.
“Sock it . . . to ME?!?!?”
The demonization of opposition seems to have grown in recent years. There was a time when political opposition was recognized as a difference of opinion, even a heated difference. But at the end of the day the parties (both political parties and individual participants to a disagreement on a single issue) respected one another as decent, if misguided, persons of good intent.
Now it seems more and more that there is a presumption that a political opponent’s opposition means that political opponent is a bad person. Ill motives are easily implied and assuming the worst of others seem de rigueur. This attitude makes it harder to reach across the aisle and deal in a bipartisan manner on other issues.
I don’t know if we ever had any norms.
People used to beat each other unconscious and challenge each other to duels in the senate and congress once had a brawl involving 50 congressmen that didn’t stop until someone lost their toupe.
WWII changed a lot of things and politicians from that generation seemed to act more like we were all on the same team more or less. I reckon a lot of comity was lost during the Bork confirmation hearings. Then it got worse during the Clinton impeachment. Then things got really divisive during Obama. Now we have Trump and even the winners are wondering if things aren’t going off the rails.
Man, I need a like button. 