Divided
We Stand
Republicans
and Democrats should be careful what they wish for
by jonathan rauch
George
W. Bush is not the President he wanted to be. In 2000 he campaigned, famously,
as "a uniter, not a divider," and by all indications he was perfectly
sincere. As the governor of Texas he prided himself on finding common ground
with the states Democrats. But in the White House he proved to be a polarizer
like no other President in memory.
What
turned Bush into a divider? Not the Iraq War; or at least not only that. The
war was certainly divisive, but it mainly divided Democrats. The Democratic
Senate, after all, approved the war resolution, and John Kerry and John
Edwards both voted for it (as did a majority of Senate Democrats and Richard Gephardt,
the House minority leader). Nor is it the case, whatever Michael Moore may say,
that Bush has governed as a conservative extremist. For every gift to conservatives
(aggressive tax cuts, support for faith-based community groups, support for
missile defense, abandonment of the global-warming treaty, restrictions on
fetal stem-cell research) there has been a measure to offend them
(campaign-finance reform, a giant new prescription-drug entitlement, the No
Child Left Behind education law, an anti-market farm bill, anti-market steel
tariffs, dizzyingly profligate federal spending). In truth, Bush looks less
like Ronald Reagan than like Richard Nixon, a conservative who was consistent
not in his conservatism but in his determination to poach all the best
political real estate, wherever it lay. Like Nixon, but even more so, Bush is
more polarizing than his policies. Why?
Bill
Clinton recently offered a nugget of insight. In an interview in July with Rolling
Stone magazine, he suggested that Bush and the Republicans blundered in
2002 by going all out to win control of the Senate and thus of Congress as a
whole. (The Republicans have firmly controlled the House since 1995, whereas
the Senate has recently been up for grabs.) "President Bush would have
been far better off in his re-election if he'd let the natural rhythm of 2002
unfold and let the Democrats pick up a few seats," Clinton mused. "We
would have held the Senate and maybe increased our margin by one or two; the
House would be very close. But it would have compelled him to take a more
moderate position."
The
voters like divided government (shorthand for when one party controls the White
House and the other controls at least one house of Congress). That is what they tell pollsters, and
that is how they vote, having given control of both branches to one party in
fewer than five of the past twenty-four years (1993-1994, half of 2001, and
2003-2004). And divided control seems to work fine. In 1991 the Yale University
political scientist David R. Mayhew, in a book called Divided We Govern looked
carefully at the whole postwar period and I concluded that, all else being
equal, "unified party control contributes nothing to the volume of
important enactments." More recently William A. Niskanen, the chairman of
the libertarian Cato Institute and formerly the acting chairman of Reagan's
Council of Economic Advisers, argued that divided government helps restrain
government spending and produces lasting reforms.
This
may not be surprising, given the different dynamics of divided and unified
control. Divided control compels each party to frame a governing agenda and
then forces the parties to negotiate if anything is to be accomplished. The
result is to drag both parties toward the center. Unified control, in
contrast, tempts the dominant party to govern from its own center rather than
the country's, leaving the excluded party to hiss and spit from the sidelines.
In 1981
a band of conservative House Democrats gave Reagan's Republicans effective
(though not formal) control of both chambers of Congress. Carried away.
Congress passed an even larger tax cut than Reagan had intended, while also
increasing federal spending (notably on defense). Luckily for Reagan, the
following year the Democratic leadership re-established control of the House.
During the rest of his presidency the Democrats used their leverage to moderate
his tax cuts and defense increases. They thereby put Reaganism on a sustainable
looting and made Reagan himself look good. With the help of the Democrats, Reagan
won re-election in a walk and left office with approval ratings well above 60
percent. Divided control also produced the 1986 tax reform, the great reform of
the era.
In 1992
the voters placed both branches in the Democrats' hands. Clinton and Congress
passed a brave budget that helped break the deficit's back, and the President
reached out to Republicans to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement;
but then the Democrats went too far, with a partisan health-care initiative
that was too complicated and grandiose either to work or, as it turned out, to
pass. Luckily for Clinton, in 1994 an angry electorate gave Congress to the
Republicans. No longer hostage to his party's liberal congressional leadership,
Clinton was free to tack to the center, which he dominated for six years. With
the help of the Republicans, Clinton won re-election in a walk and left office
with approval ratings well above 60 percent. Divided control also produced the
1996 welfare reform—the great reform of that era. Bush's tenure, of
course, has run the Reagan-Clinton tape in reverse. For most of Bush's first
two years Democrats controlled the Senate. The result was a series of
bipartisan reforms, mostly centrist: campaign-finance reform,
corporate-governance reform, the anti-terror Patriot Act. Had matters continued
in that vein, Bush's position today might be quite different. In 2002, however,
Republicans won the Senate.
For
Republicans, governing now meant working as a team against the Democrats.
Congressional Republicans and the White House egged each other on instead of
reining each other in. The country desperately needed new laws to create some
sort of regular process by which suspected terrorists and "enemy
combatants" could be detained before they committed atrocities.
Writing
such laws should have been Congress's job, but when Bush asserted near
dictatorial powers to lock up even U.S. citizens indefinitely, congressional
Republicans had no appetite to confront their party's leader. Congressional
Republicans were in the mood to spend money and run up deficits. Restraining
them should have been the President's job, but Bush had no desire to split his
party.
Sometimes
Bush did reach toward the center. He championed that expensive new drug
benefit for Medicare, for example. What he found, however, was that moderation
won him no love in either party. The Democrats, excluded and bitter, wanted to
bury Bush, not to praise him. The Republicans, whose partisans are well to the
right of the electorate as a whole, were angry with Bush for compromising
conservative principles. And so the center lost its constituency. In this harsh
environment Bush himself hardened, until at last President Bush seemed a
stranger to Governor Bush.
The
lesson is pretty clear. Unified control pushes policy to unsustainable
extremes, poisons politics, and embitters politicians and voters. Divided
control, in contrast, draws policy toward the center; and by giving both
parties a stake in governing, it can lower the political temperature so that even
daring changes (tax reform, welfare reform) seem moderate. In other
words, divided control makes the country more governable.
If Bush
is re-elected in November, he should hope the Democrats win the Senate. The
House seems beyond the Democrats' grasp, and so divided control appears assured
if Kerry is elected—some thing Kerry can be thankful for. American elections
are zero-sum games, with a loser for every winner. But this year there is one
win-win-win outcome—good for both parties, good for both branches, and good for
the country. Come November, I'll be voting for President, but I’ll be praying
for divided control.