How American Politics Went Insane

Loading

Jonathan Rauch:

It’s 2020, four years from now. The campaign is under way to succeed the president, who is retiring after a single wretched term. Voters are angrier than ever—at politicians, at compromisers, at the establishment. Congress and the White House seem incapable of working together on anything, even when their interests align. With lawmaking at a standstill, the president’s use of executive orders and regulatory discretion has reached a level that Congress views as dictatorial—not that Congress can do anything about it, except file lawsuits that the divided Supreme Court, its three vacancies unfilled, has been unable to resolve.

On Capitol Hill, Speaker Paul Ryan resigned after proving unable to pass a budget, or much else. The House burned through two more speakers and one “acting” speaker, a job invented following four speakerless months. The Senate, meanwhile, is tied in knots by wannabe presidents and aspiring talk-show hosts, who use the chamber as a social-media platform to build their brands by obstructing—well, everything. The Defense Department is among hundreds of agencies that have not been reauthorized, the government has shut down three times, and, yes, it finally happened: The United States briefly defaulted on the national debt, precipitating a market collapse and an economic downturn. No one wanted that outcome, but no one was able to prevent it.

As the presidential primaries unfold, Kanye West is leading a fractured field of Democrats. The Republican front-runner is Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame. Elected governor of Louisiana only a few months ago, he is promising to defy the Washington establishment by never trimming his beard. Party elders have given up all pretense of being more than spectators, and most of the candidates have given up all pretense of party loyalty. On the debate stages, and everywhere else, anything goes.

I could continue, but you get the gist. Yes, the political future I’ve described is unreal. But it is also a linear extrapolation of several trends on vivid display right now. Astonishingly, the 2016 Republican presidential race has been dominated by a candidate who is not, in any meaningful sense, a Republican. According to registration records, since 1987 Donald Trump has been a Republican, then an independent, then a Democrat, then a Republican, then “I do not wish to enroll in a party,” then a Republican; he has donated to both parties; he has shown loyalty to and affinity for neither. The second-place candidate, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, built his brand by tearing down his party’s: slurring the Senate Republican leader, railing against the Republican establishment, and closing the government as a career move.

The Republicans’ noisy breakdown has been echoed eerily, albeit less loudly, on the Democratic side, where, after the early primaries, one of the two remaining contestants for the nomination was not, in any meaningful sense, a Democrat. Senator Bernie Sanders was an independent who switched to nominal Democratic affiliation on the day he filed for the New Hampshire primary, only three months before that election. He surged into second place by winning independents while losing Democrats. If it had been up to Democrats to choose their party’s nominee, Sanders’s bid would have collapsed after Super Tuesday. In their various ways, Trump, Cruz, and Sanders are demonstrating a new principle: The political parties no longer have either intelligible boundaries or enforceable norms, and, as a result, renegade political behavior pays.

Political disintegration plagues Congress, too. House Republicans barely managed to elect a speaker last year. Congress did agree in the fall on a budget framework intended to keep the government open through the election—a signal accomplishment, by today’s low standards—but by April, hard-line conservatives had revoked the deal, thereby humiliating the new speaker and potentially causing another shutdown crisis this fall. As of this writing, it’s not clear whether the hard-liners will push to the brink, but the bigger point is this: If they do, there is not much that party leaders can do about it.

And here is the still bigger point: The very term party leaders has become an anachronism. Although Capitol Hill and the campaign trail are miles apart, the breakdown in order in both places reflects the underlying reality that there no longer is any such thing as a party leader. There are only individual actors, pursuing their own political interests and ideological missions willy-nilly, like excited gas molecules in an overheated balloon.

No wonder Paul Ryan, taking the gavel as the new (and reluctant) House speaker in October, complained that the American people “look at Washington, and all they see is chaos. What a relief to them it would be if we finally got our act together.” No one seemed inclined to disagree. Nor was there much argument two months later when Jeb Bush, his presidential campaign sinking, used the c-word in a different but equally apt context. Donald Trump, he said, is “a chaos candidate, and he’d be a chaos president.” Unfortunately for Bush, Trump’s supporters didn’t mind. They liked that about him.

Trump, however, didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.

Chaos syndrome is a chronic decline in the political system’s capacity for self-organization. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns and in the government itself.

Our intricate, informal system of political intermediation, which took many decades to build, did not commit suicide or die of old age; we reformed it to death. For decades, well-meaning political reformers have attacked intermediaries as corrupt, undemocratic, unnecessary, or (usually) all of the above. Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick.

The disorder has other causes, too: developments such as ideological polarization, the rise of social media, and the radicalization of the Republican base. But chaos syndrome compounds the effects of those developments, by impeding the task of organizing to counteract them. Insurgencies in presidential races and on Capitol Hill are nothing new, and they are not necessarily bad, as long as the governing process can accommodate them. Years before the Senate had to cope with Ted Cruz, it had to cope with Jesse Helms. The difference is that Cruz shut down the government, which Helms could not have done had he even imagined trying.

Like many disorders, chaos syndrome is self-reinforcing. It causes governmental dysfunction, which fuels public anger, which incites political disruption, which causes yet more governmental dysfunction. Reversing the spiral will require understanding it. Consider, then, the etiology of a political disease: the immune system that defended the body politic for two centuries; the gradual dismantling of that immune system; the emergence of pathogens capable of exploiting the new vulnerability; the symptoms of the disorder; and, finally, its prognosis and treatment.

The Founders knew all too well about chaos. It was the condition that brought them together in 1787 under the Articles of Confederation. The central government had too few powers and powers of the wrong kinds, so they gave it more powers, and also multiple power centers. The core idea of the Constitution was to restrain ambition and excess by forcing competing powers and factions to bargain and compromise.

The Framers worried about demagogic excess and populist caprice, so they created buffers and gatekeepers between voters and the government. Only one chamber, the House of Representatives, would be directly elected. A radical who wanted to get into the Senate would need to get past the state legislature, which selected senators; a usurper who wanted to seize the presidency would need to get past the Electoral College, a convocation of elders who chose the president; and so on.

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
4 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Long and flawed analysis.
One guy who looked it over and expressed the issues I have with it better than I could is Jonathon Chait.
Here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/why-american-politics-really-went-insane.html

Chait is less charitable to the Republicans than Rauch but, so what.
He sees it more like how it really was.

Imaginary futures are just that.
Intervening events impinge and can change everything in a day.

King Obama again has over ridden the highists court in the land no leader has in history has been as bad as King Obama the Stinker

Trump, however, didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.

It is a the begining of a USexit against Washington D.C. elite class.

The two major parties have been patronizing of and ignoring the demands of the voters for decades. This was inevitable.

On a related note: EXCLUSIVE – Dershowitz: Trump Wins Presidency if Hillary Moves to ‘Kooky Left’

Dershowitz contended that if Clinton picks a vice presidential candidate “who represents the kind of kooky left” like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Al Franken, Clinton will cement a Trump victory.

“I think Trump will win if she moves to the left,” Dershowitz said. “If she nominates somebody like Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, even Sanders – she’s not going to do that – but if she nominates somebody who represents the kind of kooky left, which is what many would see this as, she is going to lose the election. She can only win the election from the center.”

More bad news for Hillary: 2016 Polls: Brexit Issues Driving Voters in Battleground States

Battleground states are called battlegrounds for a reason: They’re often close, and 2016 looks like no exception.

Hillary Clinton holds narrow leads over Donald Trump across a number of key states of Florida (up three points, 44 to 41 percent); Colorado (Clinton 40 percent, Trump 39 percent); Wisconsin (Clinton up 41 percent to 36 percent) and North Carolina, which has flipped back and forth between the parties in the last two elections, where it’s Clinton 44 percent and Trump 42 percent.

(Snip)

Similar sentiments underpin Donald Trump’s general election vote, though there is not yet enough for him to surpass Clinton. Trump is also competitive in large part because of partisanship, as rank-and file Republicans continue to get behind him, even as Republican leaders have been more lukewarm toward the way Trump is running his campaign.

About one-third of voters in these states feel the U.S. has done too much in trying to become part of the global economy; too much to make changes to its culture and values, and encouraged too much diversity of people from different backgrounds. Those sentiments are especially pronounced among Republicans and conservatives in these battleground states, majorities of whom feel that way. And those voters are overwhelmingly supporting Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.


Judge Jeanine on Brexit: What Happened in U.K. Is Going to Happen in U.S. With Trump

“What happened in England is going to happen again. Next stop, the United States. Next president, Donald J. Trump. What happened in the U.K. this week is just the beginning. The world is changing and all you elite establishment, ruling class, condescending, Washington big wigs who think you know better than ordinary Americans are out. Start packing. Your days are numbered,” Pirro said.

Judge Jeanine later added that Americans who are fed up with the “‘we are the world’ song and dance will catapult Donald Trump to the White House.”

Even little Iceland is getting in on the anti-globalist elite bandwagon: Political novice wins Iceland presidency with 39 percent

Reykjavik (AFP) – History professor Gudni Johannesson won Iceland’s presidential election after riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, final results showed Sunday, although the vote was eclipsed by the country’s eagerly-anticipated Euro football match.

The political newcomer, who won with 39.1 percent of votes, was trailed by businesswoman Halla Tomasdottir, also without party affiliation, who took 29.4 percent, according to results announced on public television channel RUV.

Johannesson only decided to run for the presidency after the so-called Panama Papers leak in April which detailed offshore accounts and implicated several senior Icelandic politicians, including the prime minister who was forced to resign.

Brexit: Why The Globalists Lost

It’s not just Britain, you see. The revolution against globalism is, well, global. Britain may be leading the charge, but insurgents and rebels from D.C to Berlin are also hard at work tormenting their elitist overlords. Fired up by Britain’s example, eurosceptics across the continent are now demanding their own referendums. It’s a Berlin Wall moment.

The unelectable and unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels must be pissing themselves right now. They are losing one of the biggest crutches for a fragile alliance of countries that can’t pay their bills. (Fortunately, they still have the power to unilaterally grant themselves a monthly budget of 2,000 euros for trouser cleaning.)

(Snip)

But what does this mean for globalism, the ideology beloved of cultural elites, banks, the media, academics, and Silicon Valley, that is currently under siege from Trump in the U.S, Brexiters in the U.K, and populists on the continent?

Firstly, it’s a total rebuke to the normal tactics used by media and cultural elites to crush popular uprisings. They must really be panicking. How could so many people not do what the media and their political leaders told them to do? Could it be that branding voters you don’t like racist, bigoted, or “low-information” simply doesn’t work anymore?

For years, global elites and their allies in the commentariat have tried to brand their opponents as kooks, conspiracy theorists and, failing that, as racists, sexists homophobes and so on. But it’s not working any more. In both the U.S. and Europe, such tactics are now likely to backfire, driving more support to populists.

(Snip)

But the bigger reason why what became known as “Project Fear” failed was much more obvious, and exposes a fatal flaw in the globalist ideology: ordinary people sometimes think about more than whether the economy goes up or down. They think about their nation and their culture, and what remaining in a supranational entity with increasingly open borders might mean for that. They think about political sovereignty, independence, and national pride.

Elites sneer at these concerns as the foolish, provincial preoccupations of “low-information voters,” yet they are deeply embedded in human nature, particularly in the search for belonging. Against these primal instincts, the cold world of the Davos-men and the Strasbourg-men, with their identical suits and their obsession with GDP, simply can’t compete.