Count me out. I love divided government.
For all its flaws, it protects us against the worst excesses of both parties. Frankly, the specter of President Clinton wheeling and dealing with a Democratic Congress rattles me. Clinton believes in activist government, and Congress instinctively panders to its many constituencies. The logic of this combination is an explosion of government spending, regulation and special-interest legislation. There would be no discipline (the threat of a presidential veto) to stop it.
Republican government might be worse. Arguably, it might show more budgetary restraint, despite the GOP’s public enthusiasm for tax cuts. But what’s scary is the Republicans’ intolerant, even hateful, social agenda. Their moralism–on abortion, school prayer and family affairs–says: let us impose our values on you. Although not all Republicans feel this way Oust as not all Democrats want more spending), a Republican government would face intense partisan pressure to use federal power to promote values not shared by most Americans. The prototype: the ban on abortion counseling in federally funded clinics.
Give me divided government any day.
The false appeal of one-party government lies in a simple model of how politics should operate. By this view, each party has a clear-cut program. Voters pick one or the other. The winning party adopts its program. Voters scrutinize the results and decide whether to re-elect the incumbents. Voters have real choices, and parties are rewarded or punished on the basis of performance.
By contrast, divided government is said to promote political irresponsibility and public cynicism. Because no single party controls everything, each can conveniently blame the other for the nation’s problems. The results are portrayed as immense budget deficits, runaway health costs and a feeble economy. The public feels powerless and grows disaffected with national leadership and institutions.
The trouble with this neat analysis is that it doesn’t reflect the way our politics actually work or, in my view, the way they should work. There are two misconceptions:
This is flat wrong. Contrary to popular wisdom, the Bush years are full of major legislation. To wit: the Americans With Disabilities Act (creating new rights for the disabled), the Clean Air Act of 1990, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the budget agreement of 1990, the S&L-bailout law. In addition, the White House and Congress have agreed to scale back the military by about 25 percent. My point is not to praise or damn these actions. It is merely to show that the perception of paralysis is vastly exaggerated.
Recent experience is typical. In a study, Yale political scientist David Mayhew found that divided governments consistently enact major laws.* For example, the Nixon administration produced the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. It created the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Amtrak, while expanding social security, food stamps and college aid.
By frustrating action, divided government impedes progress and abets public discontent. If this were so, we could create Utopia. But it isn’t. Consider the economy. Business cycles occur. Government can’t prevent them. The effort to do so in the 1960s and 1970s fanned inflation and led to deep recessions. Government programs, taxes and regulations affect-for better or worse-living standards. But the impact is gradual and imprecise. What truly breeds public discontent is the illusion that government can solve all problems. This fosters extravagant expectations and programs with unrealistic goals that inevitably fail.
Our political system can act when there’s consensus. Consensus does not ensure good laws, but it helps produce laws acceptable to the public. This is vital in a country with as much ethnic, religious, regional and economic diversity as ours. The trouble with single-party government is that it minimizes the need to create consensus and exaggerates the power of narrow interests in either party. The justification for this is that the people have voted for the party’s “program.” This is a fiction. Usually, voters merely approve or disapprove of the country’s present condition.
The case for one-party government would be stronger if either candidate were striving to forge a consensus on two critical issues: health care and budget deficits. In practice, neither is. Each promises painless health-care reform. In reality, any effective reform would involve changes-higher spending, more government control or less insurance coverage-that might upset many Americans. And both Clinton and Bush ignore the budget deficits. It’s wishful thinking to believe that the Democrats, once in power, would suddenly attack deficits ruthlessly. Indeed, Clinton has been eagerly reassuring groups (the elderly, veterans, college students) that he can best protect their benefits.
Unlike Broder, I offer no voting-booth advice. The best result for the country might be a Clinton presidency and a Republican Congress. One problem today is that both parties have been entrenched too long where they are. They have become stale and smug. Reversing roles might jolt everyone and foster consensus. But my ideal outcome may be implausible, and the second-best result would be a narrow Bush victory coupled with smaller Democratic majorities. That, too, might scare people into change.
The obsession with gridlock obscures the basic problem: a genuine paralysis of public opinion. Americans want more from government than it can deliver at today’s tax levels. Both parties are equally timid in dealing with this dilemma, and, as a result, neither deserves full power.
“‘Divided We Govern” (Yale University Press. 199 1).
