Is America Ungovernable?

If you read the Democratic-leaning and/or left-of-center blogs these days, you can't help but see an increased level of overall frustration at the "lack of progress" being made in Washington, DC. In part, I think this is a reaction to the heightened expectations people had coming out of the inspirational, exciting, "hope and change" Obama campaign, and the disappointment that fundamental change hasn't come to our nation yet (I believe this is true emotionally even if, intellectually, people realize that fundamental change wasn't going to come in a year, or even several years). In part, I think the frustration is also a reaction to the bottled-up yearning for forward momentum on a wide range of pressing issues - environment, energy, health care, immigration, economic fairness and social justice, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gitmo, etc., etc. - that were either ignored or actually saw "negative progress" (e.g., they regressed) during the Bush years. But it's also the result of a perception that we have a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress (with a "filibuster-proof majority," no less!), yet things aren't getting done to the degree (and quality level) people want them to get done.

Given all the frustration out there, it's got to go somewhere. On the right, it's mostly been channeled - by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and others of their ilk - into the "tea parties" and other expressions of (largely) inarticulate/incoherent rage, anger, etc. On the left, however, there hasn't been an equivalent populist movement, most likely because there's no obvious "enemy" for the left, which has ostensible "friends" controlling the executive and legislative branches of government. [In addition, many if not most on the left voted for and even worked hard to elect Democrats in 2006 and 2008, and it's hard psychologically to say "uh oh, did I make a mistake?"]

Anyway, the frustration among many Democrats and progressives is out there. The frustration is being fueled in part by the bad economy, but also by policies and rhetoric that make many on the "left" uncomfortable, whether it's the surge in Afghanistan, the Wall Street "bailout" (the fact that nearly all the money is being repaid to the taxpayers doesn't seem to have penetrated fully, at least not yet), a health care bill that seems to drop another progressive element every day that goes by, the continuation of "don't ask don't tell," the failure to close Gitmo, the failure (so far) to pass a strong clean energy/climate bill, the failure (so far) to pass "card check"...on and on we go.

But perhaps even more than any one of these specific issues is the frustration at watching the U.S. Senate (and, to a lesser extent, the House) struggle to get legislation passed. The other day, Steven Pearlstein wrote in the Washington Post about Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), "the charmless and shameless hypocrite who offers up a steady stream of stale ideology and snarky talking points but almost never a constructive idea." According to Pearlstein - and I think he's 100% correct on this - "McConnell has decided that the only way for Republicans to win is for President Obama to lose, and he will use lies, threats and all manner of parliamentary subterfuge to obstruct the president’s programs." I would add that it's the same exact situation in the House, where John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Company also have been voting in lockstep "no, no, no, no, and no" on anything and everything, with the only apparent goal being to tear down the Democrats and to "score political points," as Pearlstein writes.

The sad fact of the matter is that Republican Congressmen and Senators believe - and they are mostly correct, as far as I can tell - that the biggest threat to their reelection comes not from the left or the center, but from the far right. This means that there's no incentive for these folks to move to the center, and every incentive for them to move to the right.

Meanwhile, we just finished 8 years of Republican (mis)rule, during which pretty much every aspect of right-wing ideology was proven (at least to anyone who was paying the least bit of attention) to be a disastrous failure. The result, politically, was that Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, much to their chagrin (and rage). So where does that leave Republicans? Pretty much, saying "no" to everything, stomping their feet, throwing temper tantrums (and "tea parties"), yelling "you lie" at the president, pandering to the craziest of crazies on the right, you name it.

So much for bipartisanship, in other words. Yet - and here's another source of frustration on the left - the Obama administration and many Congressional Democrats don't seem to realize this fact. Out here in the progressive grassroots/netroots, though, many of us see this clearly. As a result, many of us believe that it's completely futile - not to mention degrading - for Democrats to keep reaching their hands out to Republicans, only to get them stomped on, slapped away, spit on, etc. Thus, we have had the endless courtship of Olympia Snowe (R-ME) on health care reform, and where has it gotten us, aside from making the legislation worse? Got me.

Now, some people would argue that this situation is all (or mostly) about tactics and personalities. Others, like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, are more interested in looking at "the structural incentives that make people of all sorts do good and bad things." and I think they're on to something. Here's more from Yglesias article, "Ungovernable America":

We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the [S]enate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking. Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power. But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure. It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.

Sadly, I think that's exactly what is going on: "a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure." Why does the minority have that power? Several reasons. First, the filibuster and other arcane rules which make it fairly easy for a minority to block - or slow to a crawl - anything they don't like in the Senate. Second, we have a highly diverse Democratic caucus, yet we need every single one of them - including the two independents (Joe Lieberman's a major problem) who caucus with the Democrats - to vote for "cloture" in order to overcome filibusters and get anything done. In addition, we have a large number of "blue dogs" who often vote more like Republicans than Democrats, meaning that we end up negotiating with ourselves, usually to water down legislation so that they don't make the progress they could. Third, we have the insidious influence of money and corporate power on our politics, whether it's "Big Pharma" or "Big Oil" buying influence with people who are supposed be representing us. Finally, the right-wing noise machine has radicalized/polarized/poisoned our politics worse than ever, making it next to impossible for any Republican to break ranks and - god forbid - work with Democrats in good faith (see Charlie Crist, "Dede" Scozzafava, even Lindsey Graham). Today, there is essentially no good faith, as there used to be pre-Rove, pre-Cheney, pre-DeLay, pre-Beck, pre-Limbaugh, pre-Palin, etc., just vitriol, hyperbole, nastiness and idiocy. That's not a constructive environment to get work done in Washington or anywhere else.

So, in the end is America "ungovernable?" I don't believe we've reached that point yet as a nation, but I do believe we're getting closer. Here in Virginia, we essentially witnessed that over the past 4 years, as House of Delegates Republicans worked to block almost every initiative - except for the bad ones, like repealing the estate tax, passing the "transportation monstrosity" or giving Dominion Power everything it wanted - Tim Kaine and the Democrats tried to accomplish. Essentially, Virginia Republicans decided that they created a "monster" by letting Mark Warner get stuff done, and they weren't going to make that same "mistake" again. Sadly, their obstructionism was not only not punished at the polls this past November, it actually was rewarded by voters. Which brings us to the last structural problem: an electorate that gets far too much of its "news" from dumbed-down, "infotainment" TV and radio (and newspapers, increasingly), and an overwhelmingly right-wing or corporate-biased media. None of this bodes well for the "informed, engaged citizenry" that is absolutely essential to the effective functioning of a Democracy. It also doesn't bode well in the context of the question, "Is America Ungovernable?"

Ken Burns and Rachel Maddow Discuss the "Common Wealth" of Our National Parks

Ken Burns: But building human happiness, you know, that's what governments are supposed to do. And we're now in an argument that governments are essentially bad. There was a time when the government stepped in and made things better in every single way, that we could bring jobs and money and a sense of cohesion. And that's what the parks...they thrived during the Depression, not just because they got the first shovel-ready stimulus dollars of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but because they brought Americans together. And I think they still can do that, the idea is still durable, it's still flexible, it's still changing and evolving, just like "all men are created equal" meant "all white men are property free of debt". We started off by saving natural scenery and now we save a lot more - Manzanar, Shanksville, all these places that reflect a complicated past, a past that in the screaming that goes on on talk radio we ignore today, but it's in our national parks, they're the repositories of us, not just the grand geological story.

[...]

Rachel Maddow: On the idea of building human happiness, one of things that I think is interesting about the reception of this documentary of yours compared to the other ones is that people are reading an ideological text into this and it's because we've very much romanticized, we've sort of have come up with this great fable that we tell ourselves about how we can pursue human happiness and our government should not restrict us from that. But the other part of the American Dream is that our government believes that policy can advance human happiness while protecting freedom.

Burns: It always has! Exactly. The Homestead Act. The Land Grant College Act. These National Parks. This was an activist government going in and not intruding on individual rights but expanding them. And that's what the parks tell us about. This is a bottom-up story of regular people who fell in love with a place from every conceivable background. It's also the story of the richest of us not hoarding the money in some greedy, selfish way, you know, like Ayn Rand. This is people saying, my god we own beautiful scenery shouldn't everyone have access to it? That's Theodore Roosevelt, that's the naturalist Charles Shelton...these are people who are the elite, the richest people in the nation who sort of counterintuitively say let's share it with everybody.

I mean, this is a great story that's not only bottom up but top down and it meets in the middle in the most spectacular landscapes on earth which we all co-own. But think about what would happen if there were no national parks: the Grand Canyon would be lined with mansions and we'd never see that view; the Everglades would have long since been drained and be filled with tract housing and all sorts of ugly development; Yosemite, one of the most beautiful valleys on earth, would be a gated community; Yellowstone would become 'Geyser World' or something like that. We're talking about the difference between Pottersville and Bedford Falls...but yet so much of the arguments today are, wait a second, that selfishness is very much what America's about. You know what, it's not what we're about, we're about sharing these things in common, it's about "common wealth" which is a wonderful idea and not socialism. Because if it's socialism, then the people you call at 3 am when your house is on fire, that's socialism. And the people who are in Afghanistan risking their lives, that's socialism. And the people picking up your trash, that's socialism too.

Rachel Maddow: And we're so afraid of that word that we can't talk constructively about government without butting up against it at this point. We will get over that, we're just having a national tantrum I believe...

For more on government's greatest achievements - and there are many - see here and here. Aside from the national parks, a short list includes expanding the right to vote, rebuilding Europe after World War II (not to mention winning World War II!), promoting financial security in retirement, increasing Americans' access to health care, ensuring safe food and water, getting rid of sweatshops and child labor and making workplaces safer, reducing/conquering disease, sending people (and amazing spacecraft, telescopes, etc.) into space, bringing electricity to rural America (e.g., the TVA), on and on and on. Yet the Republicans tell us that government is bad and the "free market" (whatever that is exactly; obviously, all markets operate in a broader context of law, regulation, social stability - or lack thereof - etc.) is bad. Even worse, Republicans set about proving that government is bad at every turn. Why we ever let them do that is beyond me, but we need to stop letting them (or enabling them by listening to their mindless anti-government rhetoric), at least as long as the formerly "Grand" Old Party remains a party that Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt would be ashamed of if they could see it today.