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Were you by chance a teenager during the Gingrich years? It seems a common pattern to think the government goes off the rails as one begins to become more aware
by kbutler 9y ago
Were you by chance a teenager during the Gingrich years? It seems a common pattern to think the government goes off the rails as one begins to become more aware of politics.
Dysfunctional congress goes back long before that.
1960s https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/50-years-ago-americans-fired-their-dysfunctional-congress/384688/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/50-year...
“The 88th Congress, before the [Kennedy] assassination, had sat longer than any peacetime Congress in memory while accomplishing practically nothing. It was feebly led, wedded to its own lethargy and impervious to criticism. It could not even pass routine appropriations bills. It was a scandal of drift and inefficiency.”
1856 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner was 'symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" that led to the Civil War.'
Congress has been broken for a long, long time.
- tootie 9y agoCertainly the Civil War era was a lower low point, but we have actual data that says Congress is getting worse and the Gingrich era represented a nadir that we can't break out of. Congress will never be as productive as people expect but also expectations change. It really has gotten worse. To say it's always been broken belies the enormous progress American society has made in the past 100 years. It definitely can work and has worked extremely well on the balance. Just not now. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/10/president-obama-said-the-113th-congress-is-the-least-productive-ever-is-he-right/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/10/pr...
- Dagwoodie 9y agoThe country has never been more divided politically and I highly doubt that had anything to do with Gingrich.
- youdontknowtho 9y agoNo, while the country is certainly more divided than ever, you can't say that he played no part in it. His tactics were successful but they were definitionally opposed to cooperation. Calling your opponents antiamerican or unpatriotic or "demonic" to keep a fringe base frothing at the mouth worked for him and later reps in the house who redistricted themselves into safe districts. Now they are completely at the mercy of the extreme voters in those custom districts.
- kbutler 9y agoI'm not sure how saying your opponents are frothing at the mouth or calling them a fringe base of extreme voters who hold their reps at their mercy is any more cooperative. The intent to marginalize the opposition and justify ignoring their concerns remains the same.
- youdontknowtho 9y agosure. "they both do it equally." keep thinking that.
- kbutler 9y agoI didn't see any reference to Gingrich in the article, just that the Congress wasn't passing lots of legislation. I expect the Washington Post to be much more accepting of a Congress that does little to advance the President's agenda for the next few years than they were in 2014 (but they may remain critical of the process). The American republic is structured to enable people holding minority opinions to be heard and to restrain the excesses of majority factions. Sometimes that works in one's favor, sometimes it doesn't.
- mikestew 9y agoWere you by chance a teenager during the Gingrich years? I was a voting adult in the 90s, and if we restrict the criteria to my lifetime, the Gingrich years can be tagged as when I noticed more divisiveness and “politics as a team sport”. I lay this at the feet of ol’ Newt and (as one example) his “Contract with America”. From a subjective point of view it’s when “we didn’t get our way, so we’ll be obstructionists” started, and the Republican Party appears to have made it a platform since then. — Signed, Former Reagan Republican