I’ve been observing the way in which US politics is done for the past few years and it seems clear that the political system seems to have two parties completely uninterested in cooperating on things even which aren’t a big deal all in the name of bi partisanship, everyone seems intent of keeping their part of the pie and sabotaging anyone else who says we should sacrifice.
But more than that, this creates a by product of where initiative is watered down because everyone is afraid of forwarding proposals which will be torpedoed the minute they are put forward, which also can create weak leadership, which IMO, even though Obama is a 1000 times better than his predecessor or any Republican candidate, comes across as.
It’s something which has been bothering me for a while, because at this moment in time with the financial crisis and all, decisive strong leadership which is working towards the national interest is exactly what is needed, but seems to be lacking.
I think about his and wonder why this malaise, if you can call it that, has come about.
I think it is the Republican congress’s stated primary goal of defeating Obama in 2012 by being obstructionist and so making all his initiatives failures, per Mitch O’Connell: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Politics is more partisan and ideological than in the past. The conservative south has gotten rid of most of its democrats and the liberal west coast and northeast has gotten rid of most of their republicans. So the republicans and democrats who are left tend to be the ones who are most ideologically devoted to liberalism or conservatism.
As an example, in the house before the 2010 election I think there were about 80 members of the progressive house caucus (the liberal caucus) with about 50 blue dogs in the house (conservative democrats). Most of the seats lost by the dems were in blue dog districts and other conservative districts, but very few progressives lost their seats. Something like 20-30 blue dogs lost their seats, about 2-3 progressives lost their seats. So politics becomes more ideological as the moderates are purged from both sides (witness the tea party primaries on the right as a counterpoint or the fact that republicans who are elected to the federal government are mostly non-existent in the northeast). Add in redistricting and you end up with safe seats where the real battle isn’t to win the general election (that is largely guaranteed) but to win the primary. And you win a primary by being more ideologically pure than your opponent.
The GOP never held 100 filibusters per session when Clinton was president. I have no idea what the difference is now. Clinton didn’t have to put up with this level of rabid partisanship, I don’t think. He has partisanship but I don’t think it was this bad.
Plus there is the fact that if the other party fails to achieve its agenda or make the country better, they get voted out of office. Plus if the country sucks in 2012 then that makes the non-incumbent party look good. So there is no incentive from a rational choice perspective to push effective reforms until 2013 at the earliest.
As noted, U.S. parties traditionally were kind of incoherent, with conservatives and progressives all jumbled together in two broad coalitions called “Democrats” and “Republicans”. The D’s and the R’s competed against each other to win elections, but individuals within each party had enough in common with each other philosophically that bipartisanship was generally common, and Democrats and Republicans in the various elected branches of government (House, Senate, and Presidency) would work together to get things done.
David Frum’s not necessarily a guy I would agree with about a lot of things, but I thought this recent opinion piece of his from CNN.com was a good analysis. As the parties have become more ideologically coherent, there is a tendency (I would say especially in the Republican Party) for the parties to act like parties in a parliamentary system. Now, saying “the duty of an opposition is to oppose” makes good sense in a parliamentary system (especially if it’s a two-party system with a unicameral or de facto unicameral parliament), but it results in gridlock and political dysfunction in the U.S. system of government, which was not originally designed have “parties” in the first place, and in which there is no clear “government” and “opposition”–the Republicans in the House act like they are the “opposition”, but of course they’re part of the “government”. To put it another way, it’s not really surprising that a parliamentary coalition of conservatives, moderates, and liberals doesn’t work very well.
The filibuster in the Senate really exacerbates the problem. Even if one party (the Democrats from 2008 to 2010) nominally controls all elected branches of government and thus should in theory be able to behave as the “government” to the Republicans’ “opposition”, the fact that we’ve somehow all come to accept that most legislation requires not just approval by two houses and the President but super-majority approval in one house (which is already not democratically apportioned) guarantees gridlock in all but the most extraordinary of circumstances.
It’s because conservative politics, defined by the Repub Party in the past 50 years, are unwilling to disregard inequality as their central definition of their existence.
The extremists on both sides have started taking over their parties. The age of information has made it easier to organize larger, louder groups of fanatics. I really think that *most *republicans and democrats are reasonable people, but the fringe has found a means to become louder than the majority. Therefore, our representatives have to lean a bit to the extreme in an effort to appease the ones making the most noise.
I don’t know where there’s so much gridlock, I just try to sit back and enjoy it (while wishing there were more–Obama got several stinkers through gridlock notwithstanding).
If you kick up the rhetoric and say that the other side is not merely a group of well-intentioned people that you disagree with and who you think are wrong, but rather, they are actively evil, and attempting to destroy everything you love - then how can you come to reasonable compromises with them? How can you say Obama is like Hitler and he wants to turn us into the Soviet Union (weird that Hitler wants to do that, I know!) and then turn around and say that we’ve come to a compromise on some issue? How can you build up a claim of pure evil, and then compromise or cave into that evil?
To take such an extreme, ridiculous rhetoric paints you into a corner. It’s useful for firing up idiots to vote for you, but then works against actually implementing solutions.
This is consistent with a goal that only winning and obtaining power is important, and actual solutions to problems and the betterment of the country comes a distant second. Which is readily apparent.
This piece of ignorance right here is a very big part of the problem. The Demos have bent over backwards in an effort to cooperate, bent so far that their proposals are often almost as stupid and as right-wing as today’s Republicans. But today’s Republicans, intent on making Americans hate their government and the Demo Party, then move the goalposts further.
I’d like OP to explain why he thinks both Parties are to blame. Do you get this from the media? Is it a “common-sense” conclusion? Is it a result of, in trying to be “independent,” placing your perspective between the two parties?
If my guess is right, you’ll dismiss my writings here as just another shrill outburst from the left. :smack: But try to open your mind for a moment, and see if this view could be correct.
ETA: Edited to emphasize today’s Republicans. I don’t want to impugn the Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, even Goldwater, etc., all of whom would be rolling over in their graves to see what’s happened.
People need to buy into this false assumption that both sides are equally guilty. Which is why so much in terms of political debate is in terms of “uhhh you can’t criticize what we’re doing now because someone vaguely on your side did something vaguely similar 3 decades ago!” type equivocation bullshit. They are entirely unreceptive to the idea that their side may be worse in specific ways than the other side, and by saying “oh all sides are equally bad” they assauge their own cognitive dissonance at blind devotion to their own side.
Today America has the most troublesome problems in decades. Terrorism, an ongoing financial crisis, economic malaise, poverty, ever-rising health care costs, environmental destruction, etc. In the past, America has overcome problems through concerted cooperative effort.
Let’s see what the right-wing’s view is on cooperation going forward:
I’ll wait for BBQ Pit to address this in any more detail.
I think it boils down to how Americans feel about personal v. communal responsibility. Most major issues come down to that. With everything else, I think people veer toward their party’s opinion because they’re distrustful of the other option. And since both parties have corruption, scandal, lies, whatever, it just seems like Americans want to vilify the ‘other guy’ and make excuses for their own party/elected official.
Politics is kind of personal. If you throw your support behind Candidate Z and Candidate Z does something stupid, it’s almost like you have to defend the candidate so you don’t look like a chump. Or worse, give Candidate Q more ammo and then the (worse) Candidate wins the next round. If Candidate Z passes Bill One and the people like him for that, he’ll have a better chance of being heard on Bills Two through Ten, even if they aren’t related to the first issue.
I really don’t think Americans are that polar - not naturally. I think if we had a Parliamentary-style government or another form of democracy, we’d look a little less…stiff in our convictions.
You just described the very essence of partisanship - it’s a tribal mentality that comes naturally to people - from the silly stuff like professional sports fandom to the most serious of politics. I don’t understand why you feel it necesary to invoke notions of personal vs communal responsibility into that, or what it explains exactly.
The United States is equally divided and deeply polarized. One can almost see the fault lines building for a civil war. The Republican Party has become the party of the white majority of all income groups. Rich Republican whites do not need much in the way of domestic spending, and do not want to pay for it. Republican whites who are economically struggling think the government is more likely to harm them than help them. They see the Democrats as the party of blacks and Hispanics, affirmative action, forced school busing, and a lenient policy toward criminals.
The Democratic Party has never recovered from the disappointments and failures of the Johnson and Carter administrations. Nevertheless, the Democrats pick up enough support from Asians and well educated whites to stay competitive with the Republicans.
The declining economy increases the bitterness. Those with reasonably secure jobs or retirements know that millions of Americans face long term unemployment, and/or are losing their houses. They do not want their taxes raised to help them. This includes many whites who were better off economically when Bill Clinton was president.
Hostility to Bill Clinton was over culture. Millions of Americans resented the fact that the United States lost the War in Vietnam, and that many who protested against the war were doing well in life. They saw Bill Clinton as a hippy who smoked pot, practiced free love, and demonstrated against the brave American boys who were fighting for our freedom in Vietnam.
Because most Americans benefited from the Clinton economy, the Clinton haters did not become a virulent force in American politics, just a bizarre irritant.
Because most Americans have declined economically since the inauguration of Barack Obama hostility to him is more bitter and fundamental. It concerns the distribution of increasingly scarce economic resources.