When did politics become more about power and less the people?

[Acsenray]

@puddleglum

This is pretty much the exact opposite of what happened.

And what follows is a hash of actual history, but I’ll respond to only a few points.

If you were a Republican you tried to work with moderate democrats to rein in the worse excesses and get stuff for your district.

This statement is almost nonsensical. There were liberal and conservative Republicans and there were liberal and conservative Democrats. Conservative Republicans and conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats joined together to form a conservative coalition that consistently fought against reforms that would benefit black people, until a concatenation of events opened a window for Lyndon Johnson to push through real reform.

In 1996 Clinton’s blundering and the overall tilt of the country

You mean, a two-year campaign of hysterical disinformation applied with a trowel by right-wing media (at that time led by AM radio). Constant panic over “gays in the military” and similar sky-is-falling nonsense. And a kick off of the decades-long campaign to paint Hillary Clinton as a supervillain.

led to the GOP taking over congress for the first time in 40 years. However in contrast to the huge majorities enjoyed by the Democrats the Republican majorities were small and fragile. This meant Republicans had to be united to get anything done and obstruction was easy.

The Republicans had comfortable majorities in the House and Senate, and the Democrats weren’t using filibusters as routinely as would happen whenever Republicans found themselves in the minority. Plus, Clinton was still president, and could veto anything, so “They had to do it because their majorities were slim” is nonsense.

Adding to this is the fact that the last two presidents have been callow newcomers to the national political scene and didn’t know how things worked when elected.

The last two presidents? Trump and Obama? Or Obama and Bush? There’s no combination of presidents that makes this statement mean something real. When it comes to political or legislative skill, no president in modern history other than Lyndon Johnson had the mastery and power to get things done like a champion. Of presidents since WWII, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, and Ford had significant legislative experience, but it didn’t necessarily mean much in terms of wielding legislative power. Obama had only a partial term in the U.S. Senate, but had a lot of state and local experience that put him in the same league.

Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush were all governors whose ability to get legislative majorities had nothing to do with innate skill or “non-callowness.” They relied in varying degrees on their ability to appeal to the public and allies in Congress.

But that’s even besides the point. The system is not set up to rely on a president with a mastery of legislative knowledge can get Congress to bend to his will. It has always been a matter of back-and-forth. But the conservative movement has declared that compromise is heresy, so there’s no longer any back to go with that forth.

As Obama found out when faced with a Congress whose leader declared that his first priority was to deny Obama a second term. What’s the room to compromise with that?

[Jackmannii]

@Voyager

I’m reading the Federalist Papers, and they are all about power. Who gets it and how it is controlled. Obviously if you want to get something accomplished, you need power to do it.
What is different these days is the use of power to rewrite the rules so you don’t lose power. Thus gerrymandering.

I believe gerrymandering started with Governor Gerry in 1812.

[puddleglum]

@Acsenray

And what follows is a hash of actual history, but I’ll respond to only a few points.

This statement is almost nonsensical. There were liberal and conservative Republicans and there were liberal and conservative Democrats. Conservative Republicans and conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats joined together to form a conservative coalition that consistently fought against reforms that would benefit black people, until a concatenation of events opened a window for Lyndon Johnson to push through real reform.

This is untrue. The Republicans did not have power in the Congress and did not align with southern democrats to block civil rights bills. That was done by the House and Senate in which southern democrats held the most powerful committee chairmanships. When the 1957 civil rights bill passed, 84% of House Republicans voted for it and 50% of house democrats, 98% of Senate Republicans voted for it and 63% of Senate Democrats.

You mean, a two-year campaign of hysterical disinformation applied with a trowel by right-wing media (at that time led by AM radio). Constant panic over “gays in the military” and similar sky-is-falling nonsense. And a kick off of the decades-long campaign to paint Hillary Clinton as a supervillain.

Apparently Republicans had suddenly developed mind control powers on radio.
Clinton was unpopular because he was in over his head and it showed.

The Republicans had comfortable majorities in the House and Senate, and the Democrats weren’t using filibusters as routinely as would happen whenever Republicans found themselves in the minority. Plus, Clinton was still president, and could veto anything, so “They had to do it because their majorities were slim” is nonsense.

Republicans had majorities in the house of 26, 19, 12, 9, 24, and 30. The years previous the democrats had majorities of 82, 100, 85, 81, 71, and 103.

The last two presidents? Trump and Obama? Or Obama and Bush? There’s no combination of presidents that makes this statement mean something real. When it comes to political or legislative skill, no president in modern history other than Lyndon Johnson had the mastery and power to get things done like a champion. Of presidents since WWII, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, and Ford had significant legislative experience, but it didn’t necessarily mean much in terms of wielding legislative power. Obama had only a partial term in the U.S. Senate, but had a lot of state and local experience that put him in the same league.

Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush were all governors whose ability to get legislative majorities had nothing to do with innate skill or “non-callowness.” They relied in varying degrees on their ability to appeal to the public and allies in Congress.

But that’s even besides the point. The system is not set up to rely on a president with a mastery of legislative knowledge can get Congress to bend to his will. It has always been a matter of back-and-forth. But the conservative movement has declared that compromise is heresy, so there’s no longer any back to go with that forth.

As Obama found out when faced with a Congress whose leader declared that his first priority was to deny Obama a second term. What’s the room to compromise with that?

The last two presidents are Obama and Trump. Previous presidents were able to work together and get stuff passed. W Bush got the surge, no child left behind, bankruptcy reform, the patriot act. Clinton got welfare reform, NAFTA, and the crime bill. HW Bush got deficit act and the Iraq War. Reagan got tax reform done twice.

[Airbeck]

And the GOP refused to compromise in any way with Obama. Publicly. They were very open about this.

[HurricaneDitka]

@Airbeck

And the GOP refused to compromise in any way with Obama. Publicly. They were very open about this.

That’s not really accurate. They cooperated with him at times. See here for various examples of Republicans in Congress compromising & cooperating with Obama.

[Airbeck]

@HurricaneDitka

That’s not really accurate. They cooperated with him at times. See here for various examples of Republicans in Congress compromising & cooperating with Obama.

So it’s not true that Obama didn’t compromise.

Thanks for disproving the previous post by puddlegum

[HurricaneDitka]

@Airbeck

So it’s not true that Obama didn’t compromise.

Thanks for disproving the previous post by puddlegum

I’m pretty sure I disproved your claim that “the GOP refused to compromise in any way with Obama”. Anyways, you’re welcome.

[Airbeck]

@HurricaneDitka

I’m pretty sure I disproved your claim that “the GOP refused to compromise in any way with Obama”. Anyways, you’re welcome.

Nah. lol.

He stated that the last two presidents didn’t compromise. You just disproved that.

Nice try though. Maybe you’ll get 'em next time.

[HurricaneDitka]

@Airbeck

Nah. lol.

He stated that the last two presidents didn’t compromise. You just disproved that.

Nice try though. Maybe you’ll get 'em next time.

I don’t know if you have some sort of memory loss, but you are the one that claimed:

@Airbeck

And the GOP refused to compromise in any way with Obama. Publicly. They were very open about this.

[Airbeck]

@HurricaneDitka

I don’t know if you have some sort of memory loss, but you are the one that claimed:

Was my post the first one you read in this thread?

Do you know what I responding to?

Is there some reason you are having difficulty following along?

[HurricaneDitka]

@Airbeck

Was my post the first one you read in this thread?

Do you know what I responding to?

Is there some reason you are having difficulty following along?

No, yes, and I don’t

[Airbeck]

@HurricaneDitka

No, yes, and I don’t

Yeah I’m not getting any further into the weeds with you so you can ruin another thread. You are purposely ignoring the context of the discussion here so you can feel like you won something. It’s obvious and ridiculous. Your counterpoint disproves the point I was arguing against so you actually bolstered my response to puddlegum stating the ludicrous idea that Obama didn’t try to compromise. All you did was show evidence that Obama did compromise. So as far as I’m concerned, whatever this is, is done.

Anything further I’ll take to the pit.

[XT]

@Kearsen1

Ok, so I realize that my question was phrased poorly. I understand that politics in general, has always been about power. What I mean is when did politicians stop cooperating with one another for the betterment of society at large.

My thought was that it started sliding about the Reagan era. And then we have what we have today, total obstructionism.

So was it a bill that eliminated pork projects? Some sort of elimination of any reason for cooperation? Are the projects (healthcare, guns, abortion, etc) themselves just more divisive, single voter type stuff? Or is it something else.
The 24hr news cycle?

Good grief. Even in the US this isn’t true. If we look more broadly, I can think of a dozen examples of ‘politicians stop cooperating with one another for the betterment of society at large’ from, literally, every period in history. Hell, if you think about it, YOU could probably come up with a few at a minimum. Ever heard of that Caesar guy, for instance? Seriously, the US alone has gone through periods worse than what has happened since Reagan and what’s happening under Trump. Nothing new under the sun, except it’s happening now, today, instead of in the past and during some history lecture you slept through.

I think the current dysfunction with the two big political parties mostly not working together started with Clinton and has escalated, but the thing is, most of the people’s impressions in this thread that they parties don’t work together at all (or that the Republicans/Democrats don’t, the dirty dogs) are based on a biased viewpoint and cherry picking. If both parties REALLY didn’t work together on anything, ever, then our entire system would collapse with absolutely nothing getting done. As for parties putting party above the needs of the country, basically this started (in the US) roughly in 1787, though that’s just when it started formally. The US itself was FOUNDED on politicians putting their own needs ahead of the country (that country being the British Empire).

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@puddleglum

This is pretty much the exact opposite of what happened. What actually happened was that after the Great Depression the Democrats had control of the House for 58 of the next 62 years and control of the Senate for 52 of the next 62 years. During this time there became an accepted way of getting legislation passed and acquiring power. If you were a democrat you worked your way up into seniority and got whatever you could get with whoever was in the white house. If you were a Republican you tried to work with moderate democrats to rein in the worse excesses and get stuff for your district.

Republicans had the presidency from 1860 through 1932 - 72 years! - with two exceptions, Cleveland and Wilson. Republicans became the party of business after the Civil War when the industrialization of the north changed the fabric of the country. Populations shifted from rural areas to urban areas. Nevertheless, farmers held on to a good deal of their former power at the state level because states were divided to favor the rural districts before the days of equal districts and one man one vote.

States were fairly consistent in their political allegiances. The South was solid Democrat, the Midwest and West were mostly Republican except when populist and farmers parties took control of Midwestern states.

Cities were almost randomly taken over by one political party and set of bosses. Democratic Tammany Hall is famous for New York but Philadelphia and Pittsburgh mirrored the state Republican machine.

Congress was mostly Republican controlled until Roosevelt and mostly Democratic controlled after him. But that’s deceptive. The southern Democrats were virtually a separate party from the northerners and as conservative as most Republicans. One way you can see this was the literal war against unions that lasted until WWII, made possible by a Supreme Court that supported big business with virtually every decision.

The Progressive influences on the Republican party waned throughout the century; liberal Republicans were a dying breed after WWII and vanished by around 1980. McCarthyism was led by Republicans but had lots of Democratic support in the south. Civil rights were mostly Democrat-led, but started to splinter the party as early as Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat party in 1948, a revolt against Hubert Humphrey’s civil rights plank.

What happened next seemed inevitable in retrospect. Nixon’s Southern Strategy dangled the bait of racism in front of southerners and they leapt at it. The South didn’t convert overnight but in a short generation the south was as solidly Republican as it had been Democratic.

What I’ve just said is neutral history. This is not. The Republicans did not have to welcome the racists with open arms. They willingly swallowed the racism just to increase their voting base. The South also provided a huge base of the Christian Right, who had a slew of issues they cared passionately about and showed that in their votes and turnout. As political strategy goes, this was the most effective lure since the New Deal and in my estimation more so, since it was calculated and targeted in a way the New Deal wasn’t.

There can be no compromise with, no appeasement of single-value voters. The societal problem is that politicians who cater to single-value voters bring either ignorance or contempt of other issues as part of their baggage. Strom Thurmond was in the Senate for 48 years. Name his positive accomplishments, the major laws, the effect on public policy he had other than being a racist and anti-everything.

The times when politicians got together to help the public in the 20th century can be counted on the knuckles of one hand. Every other moment was one party imposing its will on the other or getting nothing much done at all. (We cherrypick rare moments of cooperation as meaningful, forgetting they typically happened only decades after their need was first obvious.) Today looks different because it’s in the weird position of having the two parties remarkably evenly split for two decades. You might think that game theory would suggest going after the centrists, and many politicians have tried to do so. The reality is that when such a small percentage of the population votes, getting your base to turn out is a better strategy and that requires emphasizing the extremes and fomenting fear and hatred of the other side. That’s why today’s political world looks the way it does.

Will it change? Only when the population no longer splits evenly. Demographics favor the Democrats in the future. The Republicans know this and are desperately trying to stockpile judges, laws, regulations, and attitudes that will be hard to quickly shift in a more liberal future, requiring ever more hysteria about possible change. They can be no middle ground in this world.

[bump]

I’m still sticking to my theory that I half-elaborated upthread, that from about 1939-1991, we had a period of unusual cooperation between the parties- first, because of the Nazi/Japanese threat, and immediately following that, by the Soviet threat/Cold War.

The beginnings of today’s system started right about the time that the Soviets started to seriously falter, and post-1991, things just went berserk. I think the Web and 24-hour news cycle only exacerbated something that was already there.

[Max_S]

@bump

Politics has always been about power- the legitimate power of the state. Now I think what you’re getting at is when did US politics quit being about doing what’s best for the nation, as filtered through one’s party’s lenses, and about garnering as much power for one’s party as possible, consequences or good of the nation be damned.

I’d say that in some sense, that’s an attitude that’s mostly limited to the GOP, and it began sometime between about 1988 or so. I think it was a sort of perfect storm between the Contract With America and subsequent increased party discipline, the advent of right-wing talk radio, and the advent of the Web.

Partisan politics has always been a problem. John Adams’s diary in February of 1763 mentions the typical one-party smoke-filled room[1]:

@John Adams

This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town. Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper, and a [DEL]most[/DEL] rudis indigestaque Moles of others are Members. They send Committees to wait on the Merchants Clubb and to propose, and join, in the Choice of Men and Measures. Captn. Cunningham says they have often solicited him to go to these Caucas, they have assured him Benefit in his Business, &c.

There were also the dealings of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who in 1790 bankrolled an underqualified polemic, Philip Freneau, as a translator in the state department. Freneau vis-a-vis edited a partisan paper called the National Gazette. The National Gazette lampooned George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, sometimes by publishing libel. Talk about playing politics.

Here is another early example: on April 29, 1796 speaker of the House Frederick Muhlenberg cast a tiebreaking vote for laws implementing the Jay Treaty. Muhlenberg was consequently stabbed two days later by his Republican brother-in-law, which put him out of politics for a couple months[2].

Washington warned against political factionalism in his 1796 farewell address[3]. Madison prepared the initial draft which lacked that clause in 1792, in case Washington retired after one term. Apparently Washington stayed on for another four years to make sure the Federalists and Republicans didn’t tear the country apart.

There was also the (in)famous civil patronage system lasting from Andrew Jackson up to the assassination of president Garfield. There was that period of time where people were considered property but still counted towards allotment of representatives (slavery). Then there was that time when people couldn’t vote but still counted towards allotment of representatives (black codes). There were also times when major political parties were based on mobsters feeding into corrupt political machines (eg: Tweed of NY, Pendergast of MO). Things used to be much worse, politically speaking.

~Max

[1] John Adams diary 9, includes notes and draft essay, 1 - 11 February 1763, [June - July 1763]. Page 27. Retrieved from https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=D9&bc=%2Fdigitaladams%2Farchive%2Fbrowse%2Fdiaries_by_date.php
[2] “To Thomas Jefferson from Frederick Muhlenberg, 11 February 1801,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, To Thomas Jefferson from Frederick Muhlenberg, 11 February 1801. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 32, 1 June 1800 – 16 February 1801, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 575–577.]
[3] Washington, G. (1796). President George Washington’s Farewell Address. Retrieved from Milestone Documents | National Archives

[Voyager]

@Jackmannii

I believe gerrymandering started with Governor Gerry in 1812.

I didn’t say they invented it. But they sure love it. When Democrats took total control in California, a reasonably equitable system of redistricting was set up. Republicans fight any attempt and judicial correction to clearly engineered districts.

[D_Anconia]

@Voyager

I didn’t say they invented it. But they sure love it. When Democrats took total control in California, a reasonably equitable system of redistricting was set up.

The opposite is true in Democratic Maryland.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-redistricting-hogan-20190326-story.html

[iiandyiiii]

The idea that all those white racist Democrats, who used to make up the “Solid South” and ensure the South always voted Democratic, just happened to start voting Republican much more often after the national Democratic party decided to support Civil Rights for black people, for any other reason (for the most part) aside from racism, is so ludicrous that I don’t understand how anyone can believe it. What do you think happened to those millions and millions of white racist Southern voters? Did they just happen to stop being racist in the 60s and vote Republican? Or might it have had something to do with LBJ’s embrace of Civil Rights, and Goldwater’s opposition to it?

It’s nuts that anyone could think that national Democratic support for Civil Rights wouldn’t drive away racist white voters. Of course it would! And of course the Republicans would try and snatch them up. There were millions of votes at stake! And the history bears this out, very clearly.

[puddleglum]

@Exapno_Mapcase

The Progressive influences on the Republican party waned throughout the century; liberal Republicans were a dying breed after WWII and vanished by around 1980. McCarthyism was led by Republicans but had lots of Democratic support in the south. Civil rights were mostly Democrat-led, but started to splinter the party as early as Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat party in 1948, a revolt against Hubert Humphrey’s civil rights plank.

What happened next seemed inevitable in retrospect. Nixon’s Southern Strategy dangled the bait of racism in front of southerners and they leapt at it. The South didn’t convert overnight but in a short generation the south was as solidly Republican as it had been Democratic.

What I’ve just said is neutral history. This is not. The Republicans did not have to welcome the racists with open arms. They willingly swallowed the racism just to increase their voting base. The South also provided a huge base of the Christian Right, who had a slew of issues they cared passionately about and showed that in their votes and turnout. As political strategy goes, this was the most effective lure since the New Deal and in my estimation more so, since it was calculated and targeted in a way the New Deal wasn’t.

There can be no compromise with, no appeasement of single-value voters. The societal problem is that politicians who cater to single-value voters bring either ignorance or contempt of other issues as part of their baggage. Strom Thurmond was in the Senate for 48 years. Name his positive accomplishments, the major laws, the effect on public policy he had other than being a racist and anti-everything.

The times when politicians got together to help the public in the 20th century can be counted on the knuckles of one hand. Every other moment was one party imposing its will on the other or getting nothing much done at all. (We cherrypick rare moments of cooperation as meaningful, forgetting they typically happened only decades after their need was first obvious.) Today looks different because it’s in the weird position of having the two parties remarkably evenly split for two decades. You might think that game theory would suggest going after the centrists, and many politicians have tried to do so. The reality is that when such a small percentage of the population votes, getting your base to turn out is a better strategy and that requires emphasizing the extremes and fomenting fear and hatred of the other side. That’s why today’s political world looks the way it does.

Will it change? Only when the population no longer splits evenly. Demographics favor the Democrats in the future. The Republicans know this and are desperately trying to stockpile judges, laws, regulations, and attitudes that will be hard to quickly shift in a more liberal future, requiring ever more hysteria about possible change. They can be no middle ground in this world.

The idea that there was a huge difference between southern democrats and northern democrats on anything besides race is exaggerated. The New Deal was very popular in the south and with southern politicians. They passed the and the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 and the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. Southern politicians were able to make it so that most of the new deal’s benefits did not go to black people but they were supportive other than that. Huey Long and his machine in Louisiana were even more radical than the northern democrats. Even in 1948 the only states the Dixiecrats won were those they replaced Truman with Thurmond as the official candidate of the Democrats. Truman easily won every southern state where he was listed as the official Democrat candidate.

The south never became as solidly Republican as it had been Democrat. In 1976 Carter won every southern state except Virginia. In 1980, 8 of the top 10 states for Carter’s percentage of the vote were in the South. In 1992 and 1996 Clinton won 6 southern states. Contrast this with under Democrats when Republicans won about one state per election, had almost no governorships, no senators, and no representatives.