Austin Centrist has some specific ideas on the “last chance” to bring about changes in election 2006.
FOOTNOTE: Note that Paul Silver’s key concern isn’t whether Democrats win or Republicans win. There’s a larger issue — one that’s even raised by some Republicans: the need for authentic checks and balances to return to American government.
If you boil that down it comes down to the vital need for genuine Congressional oversight.
Genuine Congressional oversight means that there is indeed a countervailing force breathing down the neck of the executive branch to ensure policies are being put into place and implemented as effectively as possible. And, yes, the past has shown that divided government has led to gridlock.
But one REPUBLICAN friend of mine in San Diego (who is casting a protest vote this year) has repeatedly said: “What we’ve seen with this Congress makes us yearn for the days of gridlock.”
It doesn’t have to be gridlock. But Americans have to decide — putting party differences aside — if it’s more effective and healthier for our democracy to ever allow one party to control all of the branches of government.
That question would be moot if Congress’ members put preserving their branch’s constitutional power as an independent branch first. But with the exception of a few key issues, this has proven to be a lockstep Congress.
And note that it wasn’t much better under Bill Clinton when the Democrats had all the keys to the store. Congressional Democrats in power became, fat, bloated, full-of-themselves and corrupt, seemingly feeling they owned the Congress. Newt Gingrich came in and made the case that it was time for a new crew with ideas more than just holding onto power to take over. Even if people totally agreed with Gingrich’s specifics, he was advocating a “throw the bums out” vote that would supposedly end in a big broom sweeping out the corrupt debris and hubris from Congress.
The GOP won, the revolutionarites took over — and by 2006 the Republican Congress had morphed into the same kind of Congress Newt convinced voters to replace.
Republican partisans locked in a stressful and close election campaign will attack all of the above as “Ah! He’s really a liberal!”
Nope. To state it more bluntly: American needs divided government and if there is gridlock the folks most to blame will then have pay.
But fine-tuning divided government and taking the risk of gridlock is preferable to giving one party the key to the whole candy store and giving the executive branch held by ANY party an unfettered rubber stamp.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.