Governing, Or Not

An article by Ezra Klein in yesterday's Washington Post says that government cannot function if the minority party has both the ability and the inclination to block the desires of the majority party. The ability to filibuster grants the ability; the politics initiated in the Clinton - Gingrich era, and subscribed to by both parties since, grants the inclination. No one gets along by going along, as Sam Rayburn famously said; it's 'my way or the highway', most times. The minority party sees no reason to go along, or even to compromise, because the all of the options are a win for them. If they block something that the majority wants to do -- even things that are those that the minority would like done, but not by the other guys -- they win. If the blocking forces the majority to acquiesce, making changes to make the action palatable to them, they win. If they try and fail, they can still proclaim that they tried and were overridden by the demons from the other site -- remember that, next time you're voting. They win. There's no downside to them for blocking the other side. It forces the majority to aim for the magical 60 votes to block filibuster. That target grants power to fringe elements such as Lieberman - and they use it, to the dismay of many who are titularly on the same side. (How many Democrats, these days, would just love to stomp Lieberman flat? How many Republicans cherish him?) Which, in turn, causes moderates to think why are they catering to him, and I carry water for them all day long and get a tenth the notice and attention?

I'm touchy about this issue because, from my side of the ramparts, it's always the Republicans who benefit from use of the tactic. Their ability to generate solid blocs when voting mean that they can block with smaller percentages than can the famously divisive Democrats. It leads me to smile when the Democrats manage to force something through that sticks in the craw of dedicated Republicans, because I believe that when they win the Senate or the Presidency again, as they most certainly will, they'll do the same thing -- ramming through legislation that makes me apoplectic while trying to repeal the legislation that the Democrats passed. Yet I know that it's not just the Republicans who like this game. A body that is so very fond of itself and its' perks as the Senate will not quickly or easily give up a tradition that works half the time, even when 'works' is used in a dysfunctional sense. They know that the knife that is used against them when they are in the majority will be available to their hand when they are in the minority again -- and they don't want to toss that weapon aside. It's the legislative equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Except that it's our country's future getting destroyed.