David Firestone, on The New York Times’ Taking Note blog, takes both parties to task for the failure of our federal legislature to do the nation’s business. As so many mainstream pundits have taken to do, he falsely equates the Democrats’ ideological proposals with the GOP’s obstructionism.
Passing bills is passé in the 112th Congress, one of the least productive in history. Rather than work, the two parties prefer to spend their time in ideological combat, making points rather than policy.
Staffers from opposing parties fence on Twitter, as if the whole world were watching and there were any risk of changing minds. Lawmakers send furious letters back and forth from one chamber to another, demanding action but expecting none. They post these missives to their Web sites, providing the illusion of passionate activity to the voters back home.
It is a blistering indictment, but is it accurate? And, is it fair?
First, the accuracy issue. Democrats, often to their detriment, have shown a willingness to compromise. They have consistently retooled their proposals– the stimulus, the jobs bill, the Bush tax cuts, even on so-called entitlements. The Republicans respond by moving the goal posts, by asking the Democrats to continually give and give until their positions are indistinguishable from GOP proposals and they still say no. The goal is not legislation or even ideological purity; it is the destruction of a presidency.
As for fairness, I have to question the notion that “ideological combat” is a bad thing. The two parties are supposed to,stand for different things and voters have a right to expect that the people they support will stand up for the values they have. Compromise is necessary to get work down, of course, but there should be limits to the trade offs. Part of the Democrats’ problem over the years has been an unwillingness to define what they believe and then structure their policy proposals and arguments around those core beliefs. Under Clinton — and to a lesser degree Obama — they have preferred a strategy of triangulation and an attack on partisanship.
Barack Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, goes so far as to denigrate ideology, as if holding political principles and sticking to them is a bad thing. In a nutshell, it is an argument that idolizes compromise, making it the goal and not a tool in the toolbox of political activity.
The issue in Congress is not ideological purity. It is the unhinged hatred that the Republicans feel toward the president and the Democrats. It is clear from the language they use that they have no other goal than winning political points and hamstringing the Democrats. And with the obscene amounts of cash flooding the political system, primarily from the right, they know there will be no consequences. That means the dysfunction is only going to get worse and the right more unhinged, even as the Democrats continue their attempts to make nice.
Maybe it is a bipartisan failure, after all, though not in the way that Club Washington thinks.
Hank Kalet 