I just finished watching season 1 of the American version of House of Cards, having watched the BBC’s British version a few years back. The lead actors in each version, Kevin Spacey and Ian Richardson respectively, are excellent, as is the rest of the cast. Both productions are quite dark, with strong overtones of Macbeth. I highly recommend them.
The American House of Cards deals with political and personal intrigues at the highest levels in Washington. The dark mood of each episode resonates with us partly, I believe, because of the low esteem in which we currently hold most of our national political leaders. At the end of the year, the President had an average job approval of 43%, while 53% disapproved. For Congress, the figures were a startling 13% approval and 81% disapproval. No wonder we’re so ready to believe that almost anything, short of Shakespearean witches, is possible in the dysfunctional culture of Washington.
But, is the current Washington culture uniquely dysfunctional or just a more extreme version of the way things have generally worked since the Constitution went into effect in 1789? Is it perhaps so difficult to get things done because that’s how our system of checks and balances was actually designed to work? Despite the high disapproval numbers, how bad are things actually, especially when compared to just about any other country in the world? And, is our system of government still adequate for dealing with our fast changing, highly complex world?
I thought of these questions when reading Don’t Mistake this for Gridlock, a recent NY Times opinion article by George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen, in which he articulates an intriguing, contrarian point of view. While economic policy in the US is indeed ruled by gridlock, “the American political system allows for more change than its current reputation suggests,” he writes.
Some political systems move forward through a series of incremental changes, but ours is different. Instead, the US lurches forward with sweeping changes when the stars happen to align, such as when one party controls the White House, House and Senate, as was the case with the Affordable Care Act in March of 2010; or when a looming national crisis demands action, as was the case with the Emergency Stabilization Act in October of 2008 which bailed out the financial system. Throughout our history, such sweeping changes, which often generate strong opposition in their wake, have been followed by years of bitter contests.
“The enmity and duration of these fights produce impressions of sheer gridlock that are strong and often reinforced; thus the narrative of political immobility is easy to accept,” notes Cowen, and later adds: “Lunging and lurching forward with big changes, then enduring periods of backlash, consolidation and frustration, is often a better description of our political system than is gridlock, which is too unidimensional a concept to capture the reality.”
As a number of articles have pointed out, gridlock and checks and balances are inexorably linked. The gridlock and inefficiency that we so often complain about is the inevitable outcome of our system of checks and balances. The Framers of our Constitution devised the system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful at the expense of the others. It’s an organizational model designed to ensure that no one unit or individual has too much power over major decisions, especially those decisions that, if wrong, could have serious consequences. Different parts of government have to cooperate to get things done. It trades off short term efficiency and speed in favor of the longer term stability of the institution.
The results speak for themselves. Not only has our government endured for over two centuries, but it’s done so while adapting to the vast changes that the country has undergone during that time, including its massive growth in size, population and power; the vast diversity in the composition of its people; and the highly different political beliefs, social mores and market conditions it has experienced through all that time. Its success is largely due to its built-in flexibility to adapt to vastly varying conditions. If any part of the system becomes too prominent, the other parts react to limit its powers and bring the overall system back in balance.
But, when checks and balances itself gets out of whack, we get gridlock. As Cowen points out, you can still get things done through sweeping changes, but “the fear of eventual gridlock can make our policy lurches too hasty and ill-considered. It might have been better to think through the Affordable Care Act or the fiscal stimulus more carefully, but a now-or-never logic discourages such introspection. Indeed, subsequent improvement of the legislation has proved politically difficult in both cases.”
The concept of checks and balances has become embedded in the culture of the country, not just within the federal government, but also in the balance of powers between federal, state and local governments. The early days of our country saw fierce political battles between the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton who advocated a strong national government, and the Democrat-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who favored states’ rights and a strictly limited federal government. The debates between a more central versus a more distributed form of government have continued to this day. And, they give us another path around Washington’s gridlock, by getting things done on a regional or state-by-state basis, whether dealing with economic or social issues.
This was the subject of The America that Works, a special report on US competitiveness in the March 16 issue of The Economist. Inside-the-Beltway America deals primarily with issues concerning the federal government, the many lobbyists and contractors surrounding it, and the 24/7 media that covers it. But, once beyond Washington’s centers of power, the mood begins to lighten. “Luckily, dysfunction in Washington is only one side of America’s story,” notes The Economist.
“[B]eyond the Beltway no one is waiting for the federal government to fix the economy. At the regional and local level America is already reforming and innovating vigorously. . . beyond the District of Columbia, the rest of the country is starting to tackle some of its deeper competitive problems. Businesses and politicians are not waiting for the federal government to ride to their rescue. Instead, . . . they are getting to grips with the failings Congress is ignoring.”
The same is true with a number of social issues that have gridlocked the federal government. Before 2004, same-sex civil marriage was not recognized in any US jurisdiction. It’s now legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia. While a number of state constitutions continue to ban same-sex marriage, the number of states legalizing it will likely rise over time. At times when the country is going through major transitions with little consensus on how to move forward, Let 50 flowers bloom, the title of one of the articles in The Economist’s special report, might well be the wisest course around Washington’s gridlock.
Cowen concludes his article with a cynical observation, worthy of House of Cards: “Politicians have reason to let the myth of extreme gridlock persist. Leaders like to pledge support for some ideas of their more extreme supporters without wishing to actually enact such changes, which would alienate many other voters. An appearance of gridlock makes it easier to save face. To many partisans it feels like gridlock, but in reality moderate voters are getting their way.”