Johnson on bipartisanship, bastardry, and democratic theory

I’m glad somebody has put so clearly into words what I’ve been sensing for a while. The cult of bipartisanship is a sign of the sickness of American democracy (one of many signs).

thanks, steve laniel. It seems possible that sometimes the parties might agree on an issue – especially if it’s not one they use for boundary-patrolling.

I think there is a deep sickness in US democracy, but I think bipartisanship is an epiphenomenon of it. Why are the endless, divisive debates in US politics concerned with issues that can go on unresolved forever: abortion, gun control and gay marriage? Why does actual economic policy take such a back seat? Why does it still not matter if a candidate knows nothing about the world beyond the US’ borders?

Isn’t this just another version of the Communist view that if you fight for incremental gains for the workers, all you have done is delay the Revolution, so we should let the proletariat suffer?

Or, contrarily, the Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged view that the best way to achieve a Libertarian Utopia is to stop voting against the Lefties and let them screw things up for a few years while you camp out at your Capitalist Retreat in Colorado?

In reality, ruling from either poll is bound to backfire eventually. Bipartisanship is the only sustainable position. Now, that sucks if you happen to reside on either tail of the current American political bell curve, but I don’t see how constant swings between the Ayn Rand Administration and the Eugene Debs Administration every four years will lead to a better world.

If bi-partisanship is “collusion in restraint of democracy”, wouldn’t bureaucracy/technocracy (the domination of government policy-making by expert bodies rather than elected ones) be even more a concern?

> And then there are the information asymmetries:
> you thought you were voting for compassionate
> conservatism in 2001? Wrong. You think you’re
> voting for real health care reform in 2008? Let’s
> see…

Sooner or later however a business firm gets feedback that it cannot ignore in the form of sales, market share, and profitability. Humans making political decisions can ignore or apply biases to feedback on their political choices for their entire lives without wavering no matter how counterproductive the outcomes are.

Cranky

Bastardry? Did you mean bastardy? Or is this non-UK spelling thing?

You might take the time to see who uses this word and to what things they apply it. Last time I checked, “partisanship” was a really, really, very serious problem to vanishingly few of both Republican and Democratic voters (low single digits each), way below pocketbook and security issues.

Bipartisanship has no constituency. The only reason you’re hearing about it in the US is because it’s being pushed by a particular subset of elites.

In American political discourse, “bipartisanship” actually refers to a consensus among the two parties’ political establishments. The call for bipartisanship, most recently in Oklahoma, is the establishment politicians’ own alarm at how angry both their bases are. Consider this. They just want their voters to shut up. It has never occurred to them to wonder why we’re mad.

Conversely, the Republican and Democratic bases are reaching a sort of bipartisan consensus harmonic convergence of their own, not that the establishment press gives a shit. The plight of the American middle class is making politicians’ usual decoy issues look just as stupid as they always did to those of us who think for a living. “Values Voters,” for example, left the GOP holding its collective dick in 2006. Democrats are mad as hell at their own Congress. The two bases just aren’t buying it anymore. Even Southern Republicans (who used to be Southern Democrats) want security and economic help, which is why FOX News has had to disappear Ron Paul.

But that bipartisanship doesn’t matter to the elites, so it’s not called “bipartisanship.” We’re left with a bunch of irrelevant milquetoasts wondering which mob is going to lynch them. Increasingly, I’m not particular. I’ll help anybody tie a noose these days.
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I live in a state that moves between red and purple and I can tell you that there are many many people living here who deeply and personally believe that abortion and gay marriage are sins.

And even if I didn’t live in a congenitally red state, I could tell you that that doesn’t stop them from having abortions or blowing some random stranger in a public restroom. Real progress will have to wait until these people realize that politicians don’t actually care about these issues. They are merely decoy issues, used to distract people while you rip them off.
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I am sorry but pro-immigration as a leftist principle is a little simplistic. Great numbers of new people really do cause such things as depression of wages, etc. One is not called for wholesale deportation, just some acknowledgement of this fact, and of people’s concerns about it.

The American system can be charicatured as electing someone to do a job and electing someone else to stop him.

That’s one of my favorite features, actually. If you’re going to have a big government, better to have it restrained by internal conflicts.

This is clearly not the ideal system if you want the government to do lots of stuff, but it’s pretty good if you want the government not to do stuff — at least not until there is broad consensus across the political spectrum that something should be done.

This arrangement is, of course, enabled by the structure of the U.S. government, but it actually happens because of voter preference — if a president comes in with solid majorities in both houses of congress, that probably will not last long, as the party in power tends to lose seats in off-year elections.

I’m not sure that this argument remains coherent under a close analysis. Presumably parties play the “bipartisan game” precisely because it is politically smart; I do not understand the distinction between political competition and the “bipartisan game.” The latter follows from the former. “Bipartisanship” likely indicates to consumers/voters that you have worked with the opposition, who are largely necessary to the achievement of anything of practical in Washington, and have emerged with an actual product that will enhance actual lives. That signals to voters/consumers that you will attempt to win their votes/patronage with real products, and not simply attractive rhetoric.

In politics, as in math, isn’t there eventually going to be one correct set of answers?

> Why are the endless, divisive debates in US
> politics concerned with issues that can go on
> unresolved forever: abortion, gun control and gay> marriage?

1) Gay marriage is not an endless debate. It wasn’t even an issue at all before the 1990’s. The progress of gay rights as a whole in the US appears to be one of the fastest transformations of social attitudes that has ever taken place. Certainly much faster than the progress of civil rights for African Americans.

2) Social issues are difficult to resolve for two reasons: (i) the federal nature of American government, so that the same issue can be debated fifty times (fifty-one if you include DC); and (ii) the constitutionalization of political an social issues. Both reasons are at play in all three examples you’ve given. They have nothing to do with the nature of the political parties.

To take an example that should resonate with English readers: suppose laws relating to hunting (fox-hunting to us) were enacted and enforced by fifty separate governing bodies, and also that the courts could intervene. Do you think you’d have resolved the issue by now?

Still No Specifics From AWWMNUUBM

[O]ver the last five years, Democrats in Congress have only blocked the following pieces of legislation:

* Three conservative judges (out of several dozen)
* Privatization of Social Security
* Retroactive immunity for telecom companies in the warrantless spying program.
* Legislation to deport millions of illegal aliens

… one must assume that a “government of national unity” means a government that will confirmation 100% of all conservative judges, the destruction of social security, retroactive immunity of telecom companies, and the mass deportation of twelve million people. … Those four things are the sum total of what Democrats in Congress have prevented Republicans from passing, and thus are the entirety of what Democrats have contributed to “gridlock in Washington.” Every other reform has been blocked by Republicans.

It would be nice, for once, if the constant drumbeat from Aging Wealthy White Men for National Unity Under Billionaire Media Moguls (AWWMNUUBM for short) decrying polarization, the lack of bi-partisanship and gridlock in Washington would actually provide specifics on what legislation their hated polarization, partisanship and gridlock is blocking. Of course, they won’t actually do that, because blaming national problems on vague, undefined concepts like “polarization” and “gridlock” is much easier than actually analyzing the contemporary political scene in America.

Henry, Thanks for linking to my post. I’ve red through the forst 30 comments and have top-of-the-head replies to some that struck my eye.

(#30) Yoram, Schumpeter may have been an elitist, but the notion that competition for power is central to democratic arrangements surely need not be. Unless, that is, you think democracy can operate without political leaders. Competition is a tool, useful for keeping leaders accountable and for monitoring the quite stringent conditions of freedom and equality necessary (even on Schumpeter’s account) for democracy to function properly.

(#25) W.T. “In politics, as in math, isn’t there eventually going to be one correct set of answers?
The short answer is NO. The longer answer has to do with the value of institutional experimentalism that is parallel to the value of political competition.

(#17) Jim S, Come on. You are right that resisting anti-immigrant policies seems “simplistic” insofar as I mentioned it in passing in a blog post. But, even in the context of my post it is not so hairbrained as you make out; if a large portion of the labor pool is disenfranchised (because either illegal or non-naturalized) then the constituency for real redistributive policies is unnecessarily minimized. So, reducing barriers to immigration and naturalization is at least a first step in the right direction. And we can then go on to talk about unionization rates …

(#13) gmt, I am less concerned with whether there is a large constituency out there demanding bi-partisanship (but the antipathy to gridlock and partisanship in Washington, and especially the current vogue for “change” to remedy it, makes me wonder if you are right) than with the elites who constantly repeat the mantra. I think it important to call their program for what it is – an anti-democratic ideology.

(#7) Sam – Who said anything about policy making by expert bodies? That sort of technocratic practice may work under certain conditions. But those conditions need to be monitored and democratic arrangements provide the best way of performing that task.

(#2) Steve, Representation and pluralism are good things. Indeed the first is unavoidable. The second is an essential condition for well-functioning democratic arrangements. But competition is an instrument (here we agree) for keeping representatives accountable and for allowing plural views, interests, attachments etc. a route into political institutions. That said in democracies there are necessarily are losers. And the losers are the ones who ought to value robust competition most – for he reasons I just noted.

This analysis ignores the point that much of the malign effect of polarization is the balkanization of politics that it seems to engender. The theoretic critique of polarization isn’t born from any great sympathy for bipartisanship, so much as from romantic desire for a more cohesive body politic. On this view, the ideal is not a civic culture free of political competition, but rather one in which the various constituencies (and their advocates) begin their political reasoning from a more robust foundation of common identification and interest.

The question is not two parties or bipartisanship. The real question is how will the U.S. function as a one party state after the collapse of the Republican Party is complete.

Given that over 100 Democratic Congressmen are running unopposed for re-election, it is hard to believe that the two party system is about voting incumbents out of office. Given that only one Democratic seat in the Senate is in play in 2008, it is hard to see that the Republicans are really a national party. Given that the Republican Party has almost ceased to exist in New England, the mid-Atlantic, or the west coast, it is hard to get excited about the power of the Republicans.

In the future, the changing demographics of the U.S. ensure that the Republicans will be irrelevant to politics. The real question is what will the U.S. be like when national politics resembles the current states of politics in NYC, DC, Maryland, Mass., etc?

The key to a good competitive structure is co-opting your competitors’ good ideas while keeping your own good ideas and getting rid of the bad ideas that your competitors correctly identify.

That assumes that your competitor have any good ideas. Unless one thinks that never ending wars, torture, endless greed, worker abuse, environmental degradation, gay bashing and second rate political & economic status for all non-straight-white males are good ideas.

PS. isn’t there a war in the Middle East that you should be fighting in?

re 33: it would serve the nation well to turn the “brain drain” into an all consuming brain suction, lowering the cost of knowledge workers relative to unskilled labor

great idea! That way we could outsource expensive university education and close the colleges here, relying on nation states that subsidize their universities to make up the gap.

Don Quijote,

Look at how the Democratic Party has given up on pushing for more gun control. Look at how the Democratic party has given up on the idea of forced busing in public schools. The Democrats stole welfare reform (remember President Clinton). Look at how the Democratic Party has to ease off of racial quotas at universities. Look at how even during the primaries, the Democratic candidates have to distance themselves from the Congressional Black Caucus.

The comments on #14 and #41 are very good. I am glad that some people have understood the nature of my comments, which is basically “radical/moderate.”

The American system can be charicatured as electing someone to do a job and electing someone else to stop him.

True (although it’s caricatured) and you can see what happens when the someone elses don’t do their job. The founding fathers never imagined that one group would cede their power so fabulously as the Congress has done.

“That assumes that your competitor have any good ideas.”

Hey, if you’re already perfect, great.

But human experience suggests that most people who think they are perfect are in fact just arrogant.

‘Hey, if you’re already perfect, great.’

Your broader point is certainly true, but a more narrow reading of his comment is probably accurate, and less problematic. You don’t have to think your ideas are perfect to recognize that someone elses are lousy. This particular set of opponents hasn’t really had much in the way of good ideas, and has put most of its effort into strenuously implementing bad ones.

In this country, “bipartisanship” generally rears it’s ugly head on issues where the interests of the political class conflict with the interests of the general society to the point where the politicians don’t think it’s worth competing with each other over who gets the chance to worsen their own class’s condition the most.

Then it would appear that we agree. I would, however, amend your “border enforcement” to “immigration enforcement,” since most illegal aliens merely overstay their visas after entering the country legally.

As it is, illegal immigrants are being used to screw American labor, which is the oldest story in American labor history. It wasn’t too long ago that my ancestors were used to keep wages flat here.
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Look at how the Democratic Party has given up on pushing for more gun control.

Really?

Look at how the Democratic party has given up on the idea of forced busing in public schools.

Yes, now the battle is in drawing district lines.

The Democrats stole welfare reform (remember President Clinton).

Yes, Democrats had no interest in welfare before Clinton.

Look at how the Democratic Party has to ease off of racial quotas at universities.

Yes, states like Texas use the “10% rule” to achieve the same results without the stigma of quotas. Elsewhere, race is still a factor in admissions.

Look at how even during the primaries, the Democratic candidates have to distance themselves from the Congressional Black Caucus.

How?
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Lefty at Leftopia examines the 90’s partisanship. We’re in for a whole lot more of this kind of stuff.

http://www.leftopia.blogspot.com/

Following September 11th, George W Bush operated alongside the most bipartisan Congress in modern history. What did it get us? A disastrous foreign policy, a pathetic domestic agenda, and an administration which believes it is above the law.

Since 2001 in the U.S., bipartisanship has been the problem, not the solution.

Let’s make 2008 the year of good old-fashioned partisan politics. Democrats seemed poised to take back the white house and to expand their power in both the house and senate.

Furthermore, trends seem to be point toward an overall decline in republican influence and conservative doctrine.

Wouldn’t it be fitting if the party which “stole” into power at the beginning of the century were to become broken, abandoned, irrelevant, obselete, and resigned to the history books by 2100?

These bums richly deserve our contempt– and complete marginalization.

What Obama (and I) are after here is not in any sense a surrender of personal or party agenda. Bipartisanship consists of the belief that (a) the other side is not composed of depraved monsters, and (b) the assumption that finding a middle ground is often in the interest of the nation. This was the kind of outlook that prevailed in the times of Vandenburg and even the Johnson of the Senate. It’s what is the norm in most European Countries. It was the norm here until The post Goldwater sillies went after their personal Conservative purity. Let us fight. let us be partisan. let us also find again some baseline of civility. Let us also recognize that striking deals is necessary to get things done. The kind of ‘partisanship’ that prevails today is nursery school silliness