By Dave Anderson:
The elite political press, and more importantly, the Democratic elite political decision making class is finally facing reality -- bi-partisanship is a counter-productive process goal on high salience legislation. Liberal bloggers could have told them that a year ago and explained the reasoning behind the incentive structures. But let's first start with the recognition of reality that is being exhibited today:
From TPMDC on Press Secretary Gibb�s characterization of Sen. Enzi�s comments:
"In Senator Enzi's case, he doesn't believe there's a pathway to get bipartisan support and the President thinks that's wrong," Gibbs said. "I think Senator Enzi's clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it's time to walk away from the table."
On a related note, Ezra Klein revealed today that Sen. Chuck Grassley--the lead Republican in those negotiations--has been raising money by attacking "Obama-care": "the legislation sponsored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi...and Chairman Ted Kennedy."
Why is this the case? Why is there so much less bi-partisanship today than in the hallowed myths of David Broder's youth? The parties actually make sense on an ideological basis today, so conservatives mostly agree on most policy items, or at least are willing to log-roll their way together. The same applies for liberals and liberalish-leaning politicians. Conservatives as a whole have found a home in the Republican Party and non-conservatives are comfortable in the Democratic Party. Inter-party deal-making is harder now because there are no Dixiecrat Democrats (the last was Zell Miller D-GA) and 2 Rockefeller Republicans (Snowe and Collins) in the Senate. Rockefeller Republicans were the easy deal-making partners with liberal Democrats while Dixiecrats were the natural deal-making partners with conservative Republicans. The Rockefeller Republicans either became Democrats or were defeated by Democrats, while the Dixiecrats were defeated by reactionary Republicans or became hard-right Republicans themselves.
The loss of convoluted party structures leads to the next reason why bi-partisanship is much harder these days. One party has effectively begun to operate on near-parliamentary grounds with a reasonably high degree of party discipline. The other party does not. The Republicans are making a bet that their best chance for political relevance is to act as a 'true' opposition party on all matters of high salience.
They are engaged in a politics of high contrast. Under this system, their incentives are aligned to continually disagree with the majority's proposals, find hooks and barbs to sink their teeth into, and be ready to claim credit for not screwing things up if/when things are actually or perceived to be screwed up. This actually performs a good public and good governance function to some degree as it provides clear anti-douchebaggery incentives to avoid screw-ups as the public can rightly and cheaply assess whether or not things are "working." The GOP is seeking to avoid the John Kerry problem of arguing against Bush's war in Iraq and Bush's national security anti-bona-fides in 2004 despite voting for the AUMF.
So when can we expect to see bipartisan bills emerge through Congress under these operating conditions and assumptions? We'll see bi-partisanship in a few areas:
These votes will be overwhelming and mostly meaningless. For instance, post-office renamings, Congressional Gold Medals to Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela and declaring the 7th Tuesday of Octvember National Swear like a Pirate Day fall under this category. There is no downside risk to voting yes, and a no vote often exposes the incumbent to commercials highlighting his douche-baghood.
The parties are mostly coherent on first line political divisions, but the second and third level issues of declining national salience can have significant local salience. The most notable example and long lamented example is the massive agricultural subsidies that the Mid-West and Plains states suck up. Democrats and Republicans may have different priorities in how to shovel massive cash buckets to agribusiness but they both agree that lots of money should be shoveled to the great American corn and soybean belts. Anyone from these states who votes against shoveling money to these states will lose the next election by humiliating margins, so party identification may indicate means but not ends to a regionally high salience political goal. The same dynamic will play out in major defense acquisition as contractors are spread through 40+ states and 300+ districts, and on carbon-dioxide regulation as Coal State Senators will vote for coal instead of the future.
Classic agenda setting politics here as the majority party finds an issue that will unify the majority party and split the minority party in a painful manner. A couple of weeks ago > I highlighted a couple of potential Atomic Wedgies that Democrats could, and in my opinion, should force votes on:
Cancellation of all Medicare services combined with a voucher program equal to $39,000 per Medicare eligibile individual to buy insurance on the private market. A vote on a bill with the exact language and intent as the 2006 South Dakota abortion ban(that one failed) Refund all Social Security contributions and allow for unlimited tax free savings but absolutely no Social Security Payments going forward after Jan 1 2010
Majority Party Self-Administrated Wedgies
NAFTA is the classive example here as the Clinton Administration ran as a New Democrat which meant sucking up to corporate cash in return for unlimited trade. Most of the Democratic Party opposed NAFTA, so to get this deal passed, Clinton put together a coalitin of 40% of House Democrats and 75% of House Republicans while wedging his supporters against each other, and massively blurring economic policy/ideological lines. Immigration Reform in 2005/2006 would have been another self-administred majority wedgie as most Democrats would have voted for a comprehensive reform package in conjunction with a minority of Republican House votes.
The Ends Against the Middle
This is the double-Broder --- multiple bi-partisan coalitions opposing each other. The TARP bail-out is the best recent example as the right end of the GOP House caucus opposed TARP on �free� market grounds, and the Progressive and Populists Caucuses for the Democrats opposed it on accountability and class-grounds while the corporate Dems and Republicans voted for it with minimal accountability measures.
Fear, Foreign Policy and Dirty F*cking Hippies
The fear of Democrats of being too close to those DFHs who have been right on foreign policy for most of the decade leads to voting for maximalist hawk positions and embracing Republican/conservative frames to �vaccinate� themselves.
Those are the occassions where Democrats as the majority party can expect to see significant numbers of Republican votes to proceed on both procedural veto-points (committee, cloture, motions to recommit) and on final passage. Speaking as a liberal, I�m effectively indifferent on the first reason, ambivilent about the second (depends on the issue), and greatly enjoy seeing Minority Wedgies inflicted. I want to avoid self-administered wedgies and Democratic foreign policy cowering against the threat of 1972 returning.
The incentives for �great� bi-partisan deal-making are not there. The deals are either going to be inconsequential or crap.
No comments:
Post a Comment