In the US, at a Federal level, it feels like a party needs both wings of congress & the executive to get stuff done. With some exceptional periods where ruling

In the US, at a Federal level, it feels like a party needs both wings of congress & the executive to get stuff done. With some exceptional periods where ruling by executive degree has been enough. Who we vote for feels semi-immaterial given that getting anything done feels so impossible. The party I vote for will have been "in control" for let's say half my life, but trying to get even the most meager change passed seems to have required an act of god or a budget reconciliation bill. This is jacked up, just farcically bad. The change appears to have happened within my life too. I hear politics was never a pretty game, but since Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert & the Hastert Rule, there's been a seeming inability & general unwillingness for Congress to even have to bother listening to or voting on anything other than what the ruling party decrees.