[Originally published in The Herald of Randolph.]
America is all about checks and balances. We began it all by setting up our national government in a way that would spread power between the Judiciary, Executive and Legislative branches of Government. Each would provide checks and balances on the others.
This arrangement has forced us to compromise. Compromise, in the main, has brought us to the center, politically, economically and philosophically, helping us avoid the extremist pitfalls that have in the past characterized other, more authoritarian systems around the World.
In our national political arena, the spirit of compromise, as forced on us by the diffusion of power between the parties, has helped us achieve centrist moderation. That has occasionally been painful, simply because on the political side, there have been times when one of the parties in our two party system, flush with long-term electoral success, has felt it had no reason to compromise with the other. We have seen that recently and may see it soon again.
The arrogance of presumed power and the inclination to uncompromisingly stick it to the other party has often led to the ouster of the offending party and the restoration of power through the electoral re-installation of the opposition. This situation has become more pronounced in recent decades as the Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly at philosophical odds.
We are in the middle of one of these changes right now. We have gone from an essentially autocratic and politically partisan Bush Administration, which did pretty much as it wished, through national disenchantment with those policies, to their ouster and the re-installation of the Democrats.
Despite Obama’s inclination to reach out to the Republicans, which he appears to have sincerely wished to do, two unproductive issues have surfaced. On the left, there are indications that some Democrats would like to get even for the past eight years, where in contrast, the Republicans have lined up and voted in a bloc against all the important Obama initiatives designed to address our critical economic problems.
We have no experience with the economic problems that might teach us what to do today. Further, it would appear that the policies that helped get us here and which in many cases are now supported by congressional Republicans as viable solutions, are not going to get us out of the mess we are in. It may be that Democratic policies also may not do the job either, but at least they have not been tried and already failed.
Yet, these attempts have passed despite 100% Republican Congressional disapproval. Any non-partisan bystander who looks at this situation has to think that the Republicans are taking an incredible, all-or-nothing risk. If the Democrats’ policies don’t work, they, the Republicans, win it all, BUT, and it’s a big but, if the Democrats are even only sufficiently correct, the Republicans will lose.
This may be a gamble that the Republican leadership, if there really is such a thing today outside the talk show circuit, is prepared to take. It may be a risk that the Democrats, believing that their policies will succeed, are also prepared to take. Those real gamblers are, in the main, the most radical and partisan members of both political parties, those who see political annihilation of the other party as a good thing.
However, if you are an Independent, Democrat or Republican and from the political center, this has all the earmarks of an impending disaster. The existence of either a too weak or a too strong party is dangerous. What you don’t want if you are a centrist, is for either party to lose big-time. All that does is put the radicals in charge – the ones who more than anything else, want to use their new power to get even with the party that put them through hell for their preceding years in the political wilderness – and permits them to promote their most radical policies.
The only hopeful sign for moderate, non-partisan centrists at this moment is the indication that some Republicans have been increasingly supporting Obama-sponsored legislation against the wishes of their party leadership. This can be seen in the recent bills addressing credit card fraud, financial fraud and predatory housing lending, all of which have drawn Republican support.
The divisiveness we have seen over the past few decades has been of little service to this country. We were far better off when major differences between the two parties were few and far between and when changes from administration by one party to the other did not presage traumatic political, social and economic change. We need the checks and balances provided by two viable parties with minor, not major differences.
A little more bipartisanship today could help us a lot tomorrow.
Haviland Smith was a long-term resident of Brookfield. He now lives in Williston.
