There is a core belief at work in Erik's criticism of bipartisanship: he seems to think that being partisan means advocating for your constituency. This fallacy colors the entirety of his arguments, and leads him to a multitude of incorrect conclusions. Bipartisanship does not mean, nor imply, that people with opposing political views will decide to compromise their beliefs for political expediency. Rather, the intention is to achieve progress that is in the best interest of the country.
The partisan problem is that two incredibly uncompromising views cannot achieve anything, positive or negative, as long as both sides are unwilling to compromise. Taking the somewhat recent health care initiatives as our example, we can see what happens when bipartisanship isn't achieved. The Democratic Party passed, over the furor of the Republican Party, a form of health care overhaul. Some concessions in the name of bipartisanship were offered, and some were even included, but by and large this was a Democratic victory. One of the primary Republican platforms for election this year is the concept of repealing major pieces of the bill, if not eliminating it entirely. This would mean, should they succeed, that great amounts of political capital, billions of dollars and thousands of hours will have been wasted to essentially achieve... nothing.
Another example would be the very controversial "Bush tax cuts". The Democrats have been pushing to let lapse the tax cuts on households making more than $250,000 a year (which represents approximately 2% of the households in the country), but extend, or even make permanent, the tax cuts on households making less than that. The Republicans, meanwhile, want to make all of these tax cuts permanent. Because of this disagreement, the Republicans have managed to block all votes on bills concerning these tax cuts, meaning that, if all efforts fail, the Democrats may be able to force something through using a lame duck session, or worse, all of the tax cuts would expire come the first of next year.
Now, were I a resident of Hagensburg, I would find myself more than a little miffed at the fact that my representatives in Congress would be more willing to cause my taxes to go up, and the taxes of my family and friends no matter what their income levels, than to find some sort of compromise. But this is the result of extreme partisanship- the good of the long term is sacrificed for the possibility of the short term. Instead of crafting lasting, legacy legislation to change the country for the better on the few things that both sides can agree on, every issue becomes a campaign issue, an issue that each side can try and cut the other down with. Compromise is never a quick process; it's only accomplished after much debate and discussion, and only as a method to actually accomplish something at all. But without compromise, we're stuck with constantly changing governmental priorities at worst, and political quagmire at best. Either we waste time, money and manpower with every change in the controlling party, or we do nothing at all to help anyone.
Don't mistake me to say that bipartisanship is the answer to everything. But the problem with partisanship is not that a representative refuses to compromise for the sake of their constituency; it's that a representative refuses to compromise for the sake of their party. When party loyalty is more important to the duty to their country, and their constituents, there's a serious problem with the system. They follow the party line because they're told that their party will get them reelected. They follow their party line because they're told that, when they're in power, they can make the country the way they want it to be. So screw the other guy; bide your time, follow the party line and soon everything will be better.
Finally, yes, the country will likely survive without sweeping legislation change. But who ever wanted to simply survive? I'm going to take a wild guess and think that all Americans, if not the whole of the world, want to thrive, and live how they want to live. Debate, discussion, and action in our government is how we accomplish this: whether it be to increase or decrease the size or influence of government on anything, any change requires action, and being stuck in the muck because of partisanship will simply allow us to survive another election cycle. The accomplishment of something should always be preferable to the accomplishment of nothing.
We are a group of friends who discuss, philosophize, and argue with each other about topics of both great import and little consequence.
I want to respond to this more in depth later tonight or tomorrow, but I want to clarify your last sentence -- "The accomplishment of something should always be preferable to the accomplishment of nothing."
ReplyDeleteSo basically, based on this comment in context for what you said earlier, you just want government doing anything no matter what it is? Or do you mean government should always try to "accomplish" something? Why not just let government stay out of our lives unless there's a problem?
@Erik:
ReplyDeleteWho said the government had to interfere in our lives to take action? Congress has to act to reduce the size of government just as they have to act to increase it. You want a tax cut? That requires an act of Congress. You'd like them to cut unnecessary spending? Act of Congress. A government in deadlock is a government accomplishing nothing for anyone, and that's just a waste of taxpayer money.
Now for my longer response:
ReplyDeleteIn your first paragraph, you assert that my belief about partisanship is "advocating[ing] for your constituency." I don't think this is a complete definition for how I view partisanship, but instead a virtuous auxiliary of partisanship. The difference is exposed with where you go next: that the intention of bipartisanship "is to achieve progress that is in the best interest of the country." This intention is where I take a big issue simply because we ask "what is the best interest of the country?"
If we take my example of the mining town and a movement toward green energy, we are confronted with what it means to say "best interest." It may be the best interest of people in New York to have green energy; but the best interest of the mining town is to keep collecting coal. In fact, maybe one way to help the town would be to increase the demand for coal -- thereby selling higher quantity and earning more money. So the same problem is still present: how does a representative identify the "best interest"?
The way bipartisanship works is that representative will offer her support on a green energy bill, knowing full well the bill decreases demand for coal and further depresses the town, in order to gain support on an education bill. Yes, they came together and did something, but the representative ignored her constituency. And politicians that ignore the people ought to be voted out -- and government made up of politicians ignoring the people is the antithesis of democracy.
You also write "The partisan problem is that two incredibly uncompromising views cannot achieve anything, positive or negative, as long as both sides are unwilling to compromise." The problem is that many politicians will require measures of evidence -- studies, insights, arguments and simple conversations with constiuents before they decide. Consider the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy debate. Senator Reid attached a repeal to DADT to a defense bill. He reasoned, and I agree, that DADT dealt with our defense. But the bill was voted down because the military's analysis of the integration of gays won't be ready until December. It seems that DADT will be repealed because the military is likely to find integration is possible. Republicans wanted to see the report first, Democrats didn't, so DADT stalled. Is it good or bad DADT stalled? I think it's good not because I don't favor repeal, but because the analysis is needed -- if for nothing else than to placate the far right.
Take this analysis into the health care debate. There were 10,000 different reports of the economic impact: some said a public option would reduce the deficit AND lower the costs of health care, others said the opposite. Which one should we trust? Since we aren't economists, we basically need to trust those that can take a critical comb through each policy. That takes time. We also need to let as many eyes see the policies as possible -- taking more time. If a politician felt national health care is ultimately an economic decision, that politician needs to wait for an economic consensus -- unmoving until research concludes.
Continued:
ReplyDelete"This would mean, should they succeed, that great amounts of political capital, billions of dollars and thousands of hours will have been wasted to essentially achieve... nothing." Not exactly. Instead, this entire health care debate has affirmed an American value that we want our health care to function as it currently does. It seems to me that the debate has shown Americans are afraid changes in our health care would change the quality of care received. Additionally, if quality is the people's fear, it shows a measure of satisfaction with the quality, but not necessarily the cost. Refining and discovering a national consensus on American perceptions of health care is actually worth quite a lot -- it should be telling government how we want our health-care system to function -- privately and cheaply. Then government should work toward those two goals.
As for your comments on party politics, I disagree that party loyalty is a "problem with the system." Consider the Supreme Court: do we want conservative courts or liberal courts? I think the reality is that we want both. As much as I dislike some decisions, I recognize that the court needs balance. I like some justices to be hardhearted and base their decisions on pure logic, while I also want some justices to be aware of the human cost for their decisions (issues of poverty or domestic abuse sometimes require emotion and other times logic). In the end, the two mesh together and yield a balanced approach. The balance comes from a long period of hard partisanship.
Lastly, to reply to your comments. You say "A government in deadlock is a government accomplishing nothing for anyone." But let's imagine that government didn't pass any laws for two election cycles (presidential and midterms). If the people were satisfied, would it still be a problem? I think you assume that people want government to always be acting -- searching high and low for ways to improve the country. What if we're simply happy with the way things are and would prefer an immobilized government? Then is it still a problem?
I remember a teacher in high school musing on low voter turnout. He gave the idea that a non-voting population was actually a good thing because it meant people were satisfied with their government. That the people didn't want anything to change. But come 2008 and 2010, when people are angry and demand change, there is a higher voter turnout. An inactive government isn't a problem -- a government that compromises on the values of their citizens is.
P.S., comments have a character limit.
"The way bipartisanship works is that representative will offer her support on a green energy bill, knowing full well the bill decreases demand for coal and further depresses the town, in order to gain support on an education bill."
ReplyDeleteOnce again, your views of bipartisanship as a selling-out of your constituency betray you. Bipartisanship does not inherently mean that a representative must give up one goal in pursuit of another- rather, it means a compromise, an understanding to be reached that, while the federal government may not be able to reignite interest in coal nationally, it is in the best interest of the district that their children be well educated, so as to be suited for the ever-changing future. The best case scenario, obviously, would be that the representative is able to use federal legislation to increase demand for coal as well as provide for a proper education for the country, including that representative's district. The worst case scenario is that neither of those goals succeed.
But, even if we assume your example of bipartisan activity to be true, by lending support to a bill that decreases demand for coal in exchange for support on a bill that increases access and quality of education, this representative has actually helped the district in the long run. Of course, this would be something that the representative would have to convince the district of- as you said, a representative not adequately representing a district would need to be removed, but sometimes that's simply a matter of convincing the district that an action seemingly against their best interests may actually be better in the long run.
I'll also say, re: your DADT repeal argument, that the Republican rejection of the repeal amendment is not because they "require more analysis", but because they are against the repeal on moral grounds. It's not that they're actually worried that repealing DADT will negatively affect the military, but rather that their party's stance on homosexuality is that it should neither be encouraged nor acknowledged in any manner. Note the rampant rejection of equal rights for homosexuals in various states, including but not limited to harassment in the workplace and the very tender issue of homosexual marriage. The fact that the report is coming out in December is just a bonus, as it buys time for a (hopefully) Republican congress to come into power and reject (or continuously delay) the repeal.
Analysis, as you said, takes time. But that doesn't change the fact that political ideology more often wins out over scientific fact. Take the climate change (or global warming) issue as your counter-example. Huge amounts of evidence has been presented that this climate change is caused, in part, by mankind. And yet, rejection is rampant (particularly on the right) because of A) ideology, B) religion and C) a minute number of outliers that do not support (or are counter to) the idea of man-caused climate change. Analysis does not often solve political disputes, because few analysis are conclusive. You said yourself, 10,000 reports on the health care debate, and so many of them were contradictory that there was no way to conclusively say which would prove true.
Political stalemate is not excused by a "lack of analysis"- it's not excused in any event. Political stalemate occurs almost entirely due to the meeting of differing ideologies and a refusal to budge, much like the Zax in the prairie of Prax.
But the primary issue with your argument is, as I said to begin with, your understanding of bipartisanship, and thus I can only assume your understanding of partisanship, is flawed. Bipartisanship is not the same as "tit-for-tat". What you describe is more akin to the Berlin Wall. The USSR and the US ended up splitting Berlin, and Germany, because they couldn't come to a real accord on how to deal with the country. Their inability to compromise left that nation divided against itself, to be controlled by each side as they saw fit.
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary, bipartisanship would have been if, somehow, they came together and formed an agreement on how best to handle Germany after the occupation ended. This would have surely been a compromise measure for both countries, and I'll be frank in saying that it might not have been a great thing for Germany, but that is bipartisanship. To put it simply, your version of bipartisanship is an avoidance of the issue itself (through vote trading), whereas actual bipartisanship is a discussion and hopeful resolution of that issue.
Now, vote trading surely happens, and used to happen quite a bit. But especially in the last few years, we've seen such extreme partisanship on both sides of the aisle (but, perhaps unsurprisingly, in much greater amounts from the Republican minority than the Democratic minority the years previous), that even vote trading was hard to accomplish. Republicans who didn't follow party line were quickly brought back into the fold or found themselves facing primary challenges.
One thing you don't seem to take into your accounting of the political system is that of the media. I can't say for certain what your opinion of the media is, but your belief that the health care reform has shown that Americans (for better or worse) don't want things to change is flawed and is predicated on the idea that the people actually know what they're talking about. I'll tell you right now, after spending the weekend with my grandparents, they're not impressed by "Obamacare" in the least. But I'll also tell you that they're not actually aware of all of the things it institutes, like most people. They're told the "worst" of it (death panels, government-mandated health insurance, changes to medicare), without necessarily understanding the benefits derived (availability of health insurance to all uninsured regardless of preexisting conditions as well as an extreme alteration to law that allowed exclusion based on preexisting conditions, students have access to parental health care for three years longer than previously). So of course they're going to think it a bad thing. Republicans called Medicare the end of freedom in America back when it was passed, and yet are now using it as a wedge against Democrats in this election, with the claim that the health care bill cut $500 billion from the program. And it's working, because people don't know any better.
Why would they? Most people aren't like you and I. They don't have the time to actually read these bills, thousands of pages of law alterations that require huge amounts of cross-referencing to actually understand. They really don't have the time to even read the summaries of these bills, nor often the knowledge on where to access them if they wanted to. Frankly, most have no inclination to research on their own either; they have an innate trust of the media to tell them the truth, and of their politicians to be frank and honest about the repercussions of their actions. So yes, when you ask thousands of Americans in a sampling poll if they think the health care reform act of 2009 was a good thing, many of them will think back to the information they have and respond that, no, in fact this law is the end of freedom in America. Maybe they're right. But it's surely not due to actual knowledge as much as it's due to sheer luck.
As per your Supreme Court preference, I'll be honest in saying that I'd rather my Supreme Court justices drop their political leanings when they don those majestic robes. But that's an unlikely proposition. But really, what I'd like to see is a partisanship of a different sort on the Supreme Court: originalism (or, perhaps, constructionism) vs. activism. I want to see full-boar arguments on whether to interpret cases based on the original intention of the authors of the constitution, or perhaps simply a literal reading of the constitution, versus a reading into the meaning behind the words and the spirit and purpose of the text itself. That's partisanship I can get behind. But when decisions come down like Bush v. Gore, where the vote was literally along the party lines of the justices, I'm severely concerned as to the role of that court. I don't seek balance between the parties in their judicial decisions; I seek decisions based on what is legal and what is not, and while there is certainly latitude for discussion within those confines, the idea of it being a liberal or conservative decision is just wrong.
ReplyDeleteFinally, a government in deadlock is, I say again, a waste of money. We spend millions, perhaps even billions, on those representatives we send to Washington, and the very idea that they should sit on their hands until they are necessary is abominable to me. Perhaps if the federal government was situated like the Oregon legislature, where our House and Senate meet every other year excepting for emergency circumstances, I would certainly be satisfied with the concept of governmental restraint. But we don't. The federal Congress is designed to be in session most of the year, every year, and I'm inclined to think of this as an opportunity for beneficial action on the part of the country. The people may think the country is on the right track, but much as a horse and carriage require a driver to keep them heading straight, it would take very little for our country to veer entirely off course. And even then, the country is never simply "fixed". On the right track doesn't mean we're at our destination; hell, there is no final destination. There's always something to fix, whether it's toxic waste, or national security, or drug laws, or abortion laws, or health care. Obviously the parties differ on that matter, and you know what? I'm absolutely fine with that. I encourage spirited debate. But the whole point of debate is to try and convince the other side, so that in the end some action is taken. If neither side comes at a debate with the willingness to find flaws in their own argument as well as their opponent's, then no ground will ever be given. And if no ground is given, we are at a perpetual impasse, one that provides no help for anyone.
I think I've covered your concerns adequately.