Never in most of our lifetimes, not even during the Watergate years or the Clinton impeachment, have the federal government’s elective branches begun a new biennium with less likelihood for accomplishment and greater threat of chaos.
The atmosphere in Washington is too toxic. The ideological polarization on Capitol Hill is too severe, leavened by far too few moderates of either party. The tradition of friendly relations “across the aisle” is mostly a distant memory. The power of hardline activist groups on both sides, demanding purity rather than effective compromise, has grown too great. The litmus tests regarding the border wall and abortion are too dominant. And the civil society undergirding our political system has eroded too much.
The left wing of the already-leftist House Democratic majority is Hades-bent on impeaching President Trump, without feeling a need to specify exactly why. Special counsel Robert Mueller has not concluded his investigation, and has given no indication that Trump himself has committed legally indictable offenses, but the radical “progressives” want to pronounce the sentence before even hearing the evidence. A terrorist-supporting freshman says “impeach the motherf–ker,” and Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t even issue a clear reprimand, either for the rush to judgment or the language used about the nation’s president.
For the Democrats, it will be all investigation and no legislation. This doesn’t bode well.
House Republicans themselves are wagged by a Freedom Caucus rump that treats all compromise as a crime against humanity. The president is, well, Trump. Fat chance the GOP will be able to act statesmanlike.
In 1975, after Watergate, Democrats controlled a veto-proof majority in the House and a near veto-proof Senate, with enough flat-out liberal Republicans to help them override almost any Gerald Ford veto they wanted. After Iran-Contra in 1987, enough bipartisan comity existed, with enough ongoing initiatives of a bipartisan nature already underway, that few doubted the chances for major legislation for budget control, against narcotics, and for assistance for the homeless. And despite impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, Congress entered 1999 with Clinton so close to it in his ideological rhetoric that a plethora of key bills were passed and implemented.
Can anyone say they expect anything similar this year? Does anyone see serious grounds for hope on any legislative front? (The one possible exception is an “infrastructure” bill, which would be so unaffordable in the current debt situation as to be wholly irresponsible. The one case where legislative gridlock would be a good thing is the only time gridlock may be broken.)
Worse, there’s little incentive from society as a whole for lawmakers to act responsibly. The nation arguably is more balkanized — fragmented racially, geographically, and culturally — than it has been in any of our lifetimes. And our culture is also more impatient than ever before: Everybody wants what they want, when they want it, and no one has time for incremental progress or partial victories. Our politicians are reflecting and representing a populace that self-selects its sources of information, self-segregates into like-thinking communities, and is loath even to listen to opposing viewpoints.
Even for those of us naturally disposed to Panglossian sunniness, any contact with today’s political reality — any at all — is cause for pessimism.
Watch this space next week for a few idealistic ideas for how Republicans can do their part to prove the pessimism wrong. Unfortunately, idealism and plausibility don’t always walk hand in hand.
