A split government?

As I’ve noted before, I tend to, philosophically, prefer a split government, where no one party controls both the White House and both chambers of Congress. Such an arrangement keeps a single ideology or political agenda from running roughshod over the country (whether Left or Right).

But MS Bellows suggests that in this case it might not be a bad idea for a while to have just one party in the driver’s seat.

As Election Day nears and McCain’s chances of electoral success fade, the McCain campaign has started using a clever and deceptive argument with voters: that it’s dangerous to have single-party rule in Washington, headed by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

That’s a deceptive argument, because it ignores the fact that it was single-party government — Republican control of the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court for six of the last eight years, and Republican control of two of the three branches for the past decade and a half — that have caused almost all the problems the nation now faces. Even with Democratic control of the political branches, we still won’t have single-party rule, because Republicans still comprise seven of the nine Supreme Court justices, and the Court’s “conservatives,” despite their protestations, are astoundingly activist, “legislating from the bench” every chance they get.

I usually don’t count SCOTUS in the equation, for a variety of reasons, but his point is well made.

Let me note, parenthetically, that I really have very little use for either Pelosi or Reid. Both tend to be shrill partisans who remind me of fingernails on a blackboard. Worse, neither has been particularly effective in standing up to Bush over the last couple of years. That said, I am fairly confident that it will be Obama pressing his agenda over theirs not the other way around.

Bellows’ central point:

But we’re living in an exceptional time that proves the rule. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst possible form of government — except for all the rest. What he meant was that the checks and balances and inefficiencies of democratic governments can hamstring both bad ideas and good ones. The best government of all, however, is one that can take decisive action on good ideas — and sometimes, a nation faces a future so dire that it cannot afford to hamstring itself.

Today — with our nation engaged in two wars, unable to deal with natural (let alone terroristic) crises at home, ten times deeper in debt than we were when the “fiscally conservative” Ronald Reagan took office and twice as deep as we were just eight years ago, and on the brink of a credit collapse and big-D Depression; with our nation’s schools overcrowded, our industrial base sold for scrap, our scientific and research communities falling behind those of other nations for lack of government incubation, and our economy paying three times as much per capita for healthcare as our competitor nations are paying; with global warming accelerating and our reliance on foreign oil still expanding and species dying and weather worsening — with our nation at the tipping points in so many diverse yet overlapping areas, with such tremendous opportunities and such terrible hazards confronting us, we cannot afford to be inefficient. Right now, we must be positioned to enact bold ideas boldly.

That’s not undemocratic. In two years, and again in four, we will have chances to reconsider most of our leaders. But until then, our nation’s ability to move nimbly and powerfully and well may determine whether the 21st will be another American Century, or the end of America’s century-long state of grace.

Put differently: there are a lot of fires right now. Our government is like a fire truck that must get around as quickly as possible if it wants to put them all out before they turn into a citywide conflagration. Cross-party voting is a way of intentionally hobbling our government — which, right now, is akin to disabling a couple of cylinders on the truck, so that it can’t drive so quickly — or having two drivers, each intent on putting out a different fire first. It won’t work.

Here’s the right formula: one driver, fast truck, save city.

Claiming that a particular time is exceptional is, of course, always dangerous. But I have little doubt that even if the Dems win big-time all over, the threat of the next Congressional election cycle (which officially begins November 5th) will provide a check, as will the Senate filibuster threat.

The filibuster should be used sparingly, but ever since Democrats won a slim majority two years ago, Senate Republicans have quietly filibustered over fifty pieces of legislation, shutting down every significant Democratic intiative (and then, with remarkable chutzpah, have campaigned this year by calling the Democrats “do-nothings”).

How’s that “intentional hobbling” worked out for us? Not well.

 So what does Bellows propose?

(a) Electing more Democrats to Congress, especially to the Senate;

(b) Electing as President a Democrat who is both willing to break from Establishment thinking and can inspire the herd of cats that is the Democratic Congress into pulling together on important issues like this, and demanding that he then actually act that way; and

(c) If the Congressional leadership can’t or won’t lead as boldly as their President needs them to do, then changing the Democratic leadership as well, replacing Reid and Pelosi and their lieutenants with progressives who actually have the courage of their convictions.

If we do this, then our government will have a fair chance to solve those problems that only government can solve, which is, after all, its job. And, again, for those worried about Democrats having too much power, if we don’t like what a gutsy Democratic government does, we can start cutting it back in only two years, when 1/3 of the Senate and the entire House will be up for re-election.

After six years of Republican dominance of all three branches of government followed by two years of gridlock, doesn’t it make sense to give a truly progressive Democratic government a two-year trial run, and see if they can do better than the neoconservatives have?

They can hardly do worse.