Fractious Factions
by digby
Good for E.J. Dionne for injecting this into elite opinion. If it isn't said by one of the village scibblers, it's as if it doesn't exist, so I really appreciate his bringing up the subject.
The dynamics of Washington aren't new and they aren't particular to these players. We have a two party system. As Dionne mentions, there's always been a strain of anti-partisanship in America, particularly among a certain class of political elites, of which Obama is clearly one, for what appears to be philosophical and temperamental reasons as well as more pragmatic, political ones.
This is an argument that goes all the way back to the beginning of the country. The famous Federalist #10 (and #9) deals with the danger of factions and the need for several layers of check and balances to ensure that the majority doesn't run roughshod. One of the problems, as Madison saw it, was that since the majority were not property owners, they would be likely to overrule those who did and we all know where that leads...
Garry Wills in his book Explaining America, wrote that Madison's protection of the minority most often stands in the way of progress:
"Minorities can make use of dispersed and staggered governmental machinery to clog, delay, slow down, hamper, and obstruct the majority. But these weapons for delay are given to the minority irrespective of its factious or nonfactious character; and they can be used against the majority irrespective of its factious or nonfactious character. What Madison prevents is not faction, but action. What he protects is not the common good but delay as such."
Let's face it. We all hate partisanship when the other party has an edge. When we have the power, we think we should have the upper hand and when we don't have the power, we believe in checks and balances. The very idea of partisanship is, therefore, partisan. (And in recent years the idea of faction stopping action, has been the hope among liberals anyway, that the Democratic faction would stop the radical program of the "conservative" movement, so it does go both ways.)
But it has always been part of the system. Madison's idea was that the bigger the country the more factions there are and therefore the less effect any one group would have. What he didn't foresee, and none of them did, was that this process they created would build a durable and unbreakable two party system. Candidates always say they want to stop the partisan bickering or be a united not a divider or break with the braindead politics of the past. But the reality is that we have two parties that represent different ideologies and they fight it out for supremacy, which moves back and forth between them. (It is worth noting that in the past 35 years or so, the Republicans have been more successful at advancing their agenda because the Democrats were on the decline in the South during much of it --- and they failed to exercise their prerogatives when they were in the minority.)
This flawed system hums along most of the time fairly well, but in times of crisis it depends upon the good will of the minority to stop using its built in extraordinary powers to obstruct and join with the majority to solve the problem, whether its war or depression or, conceivably, environmental catastrophe. Unfortunately, we are dealing with a rump, regional minority party today which does not believe in compromise under any circumstances. They are very much like the people Lincoln spoke of in the famous Cooper Union speech I've referenced many, many times on this blog:
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them.
Much like the southern confederates of Lincoln's time, the modern Republicans believe that until Democrats sign on to their ideology, openly and without any deviation, they must stop them, no matter what the consequences. When they are in the majority, they dominate without apology and when they are in the minority, they throw themselves into the machinery to obstruct anything that isn't part of their agenda. They are perfectly willing to destroy the country.
In the current party permutations, bipartisanship only succeeds when the Democrats are in the minority. And that is precisely why the permanent political establishment only concerns itself with bipartisanship when the Democrats are in the majority. Going all the way back to the very beginning the biggest worry among the elites was that the rubes would get too much power. They're still holding the line.
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