The book suffers from some pathologies of the David Broder pox-on-both-houses school that are easy pickings for liberal critics. Commenting on the book yesterday, Mark Schmitt made the necessary criticisms about Eilperin's tendency to erect equivalencies between the two parties in assessing blame for the current state of Congress. One could also point out that her portrait of two congressional parties bearing equal and opposite degrees of ideological extremism is inaccurate; as Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker showed most recently, the congressional Republican Party as a whole is considerably more right-wing than the congressional Democratic Party is left-wing.
But honestly, those critiques are no-brainers. The more important point is this: There's a sound liberal case to be made that at least some of the institutional trends Republicans have either inaugurated or accelerated while in power -- centralization of power in the party leadership (power that was once dispersed among committee chairs), elimination of veto points where legislation can be blocked or bottled up, rigid party discipline and efficiency -- are on the whole good developments in the abstract that lend themselves both to the emergence of a more effective and ideologically coherent Democratic opposition in the short term and to increased opportunities for major (and liberal) expansions in government action in the longer term. That rising incivility and increased partisanship might not be inherently or invariably bad developments is not a notion that Eilperin seems much to have considered. This passage from early in the book sort of gives the game away:
In one sense, the House is now a better-oiled machine than it used to be. Republicans routinely pass legislation on an array of topics, from curbing class action suits to revamping the United Nations. But on a more profound level, the chamber is dysfunctional. Democratic leaders are tangential to governing, devoting much of their time to issuing press releases, complaining of their ill treatment, and drafting policies that have no chance of making it into law. A few conservative rank-and-file Democrats have the opportunity to shape legislation, but their influence is limited and they must endure constant taunts from their more liberal colleagues. Moderate Republicans experience the same sort of hectoring when they attempt to forge common ground with the minority. In this highly contentious environment, bipartisan cooperation amounts to betrayal.This is a big change, but what exactly is the problem with it? The only one I can see is that the Republicans are the ones in the majority -- not that better treatment of minority parties per se is crucially important. What Eilperin is describing is Congress's transformation, under Republican stewardship, into a more parliamentary-style system, where strict party discipline is maintained, the majority has absolute legislative power, and the opposition's job is to forge an alternative legislative program and try to win elections with it. Now that's highly antithetical to the traditions of American political institutions, and even in the current state of “fight-club politics” the situation here in the States isn't nearly as rigidly partisan as it is in, say, Canada or the United Kingdom. But that's the point: Canada, the U.K., the European continental states with parliamentary systems -- they all seem to be doing just fine. In fact, the salient difference between them and the United States is the comparatively robust size of their welfare states, and that, lo and behold, is hardly coincidental. The relationship between public social provisions and the structure of state political institutions is, in fact, highly significant.
The American tradition, with its decentralization, weak parties, and structural checks and balances -- and particularly the old-style institutional makeup of Congress, featuring various counter-majoritarian elements like the filibuster and the dispersal of power among many semi-autonomous committee barons -- provides an extensive array of checks on the ability to pass legislation. It has been key to hampering the growth of public social protections in America, from health care to labor law, in comparison with other western countries. If, in a fit of power-mad mania, Republicans have helped, even temporarily, to make Congress a more ruthlessly disciplined and efficient legislative machine, on the eve of a potential congressional takeover, these changes seem like something Democrats might want to consider embracing, at least to some degree.
These changes, it should always be mentioned, were just what liberal reformers of the mid-20th century had advocated, both inside and outside of Congress, and they did so (particularly in their efforts to curb the autonomy of committee chairs and abolish the filibuster) for just the reasons I lay out. (See Julian Zelizer's terrific book On Capitol Hill for that story.) Ultimately, liberalism has more to gain than conservatism from efficient legislative machinery that can allow for fast expansions of government action. While Republicans in power under such circumstances can inflict serious damage, the liberal universal entitlements and other social polices that Democrats might push once they regain power have proven genuinely difficult to dislodge or reverse once enacted.
Of course, with any set of dramatic changes there are bound to be tradeoffs. There are some real costs entailed by the shift toward partisan polarization and a more parliamentary-style system. But while liberals shouldn't be cavalier about what may be lost in terms of deliberation and regularly sober-minded and responsible policy-making, neither should they be lulled into nostalgia for the good old days of boys' club back-slapping and chumminess in Congress -- a deeply conservative culture even during the decades that Democrats ran the place.
Sam Rosenfeld is a Prospect staff writer.
