This article in the New York Times (with graphics) tells how the polarization at the Supreme Court is reflected in clerkship hires. Conservative justices hire conservative clerks who previously clerked for conservative lower court judges. The same with liberal justices. Â In Congress, too, moderate Republicans and Democrats are losing primaries to "true believers." Voters seem polarized as well. Are we really settling into a world in which we each believe we are simply at war with each other, each believing that we are fighting for good against evil opponents? When does reconciliation come back in style?
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Losing Common Ground
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Hopefully in 2012.
From the above referenced article: "But ideological orthodoxy can dampen the robust discussions in chambers that clarify issues and shape rulings."
Yes, Professor, 'moderates' are an endangered species in both the political and legal arenas. The 'my mind is made up….don't confuse me with the facts' approach to problem solving has left many of the party faithful without desire to reach consensus anymore. But, who was it that said that nobody is right if everybody is wrong?
Economic reconciliation could occur if each side submitted it's plan(s) for public school/healthcare/Social Security/etc funding reform and agreed to accept the findings of the nonpartisan CBO. Same process for 'job creation' and 'energy production' programs. Craft the proposals. Do the math. Agree to implement the ideas that provide the most benefit to the largest number of people. Not a stylish approach, but one that could produce results.
That's pretty much the big government progressive fascist approach, Dan. It never works, because people aren't cattle.
The delegation of our most pressing issues to an unelected (and, hence, unaccountable) entity, as Dan suggests, represents an abdication of responsibility on the part of both the electorate and the elected.
Without any type of scientific or detailed analysis supporting my conclusion, it seems to me that reconciliation seems to occur most frequently when one of the parties control Congress and the other the White House. While in no way am I proposing that the parties should be limited to one or the other, perhaps it is instructive to look back at the most recent President/Congress pairings where the two bodies were divided among the parties (the Reagan years, Bush I and Clinton post 94) to see what transpired to make those years successful and what caused them to be polarized? I am particularly thinking of Bush I who voluntarily raised taxes knowing full well the Democrats would kill him for it come election time but did so anyways.
larry d, You are correct when you say people are not cattle. But, do they not, in many political scenarios display nothing other than herd mentality? By using the terms 'big government, progressive, and fascist' you seem to indicate that you too have fallen into the habit of riding the label train rather than offering a plan of action. If you must label me, may I suggest that you call me a solutionist. I want to help fix the broken whatever, not just cast blame or whine about how it got broken. To that end, I strongly support the use of nonpartisan fact finding measures to evaluate all the ideas on the table. The CBO is one entity that seems to have the capability to determine 'real' monetary costs/savings projections of potential legislation. To answer Professor Lee's last question, reconciliation will come back in style when the political parties realize that they can best serve us by offering practical solutions to real problems rather than offering feel-good sound bites with no substance. Sadly, that will probably happen shortly after pigs learn to fly over the polar icecaps in Hell.
Quidpro, Since you often seem to prefer literal interpretations, you should realize that I only suggested using the CBO as a 'tool' to measure the potential fiscal impacts of opposing proposals. The reconciliation would occur when legislators agreed to implement the internally crafted plan that best served the greatest number of the people. At no point did I suggest that the CBO be granted the authority to formulate policy or legislation. However, my suggestion that there may be a need to use the CBO to facilitate fiscal reconciliation could be viewed as an admission that I do not have much faith in politicians as unbiased problem solvers and that too many of them seem to put the survival of The Party above the welfare of The People.
I suggest you call me The Genius, Dan, but that doesn't really mean much, does it?
The CBO is already supposed to be used as a tool in the way you propose. But as the healthcare fiasco showed, the CBO can and is used as a political weapon to bludgeon the opposition and deceive the citizenry. The CBO has changed its forecast about three times since the disastrous reform bill passed, and it's never good news. The rushed numbers manufactured before passage at the insistence of Democrats were bogus.
But the real kernel I have a problem with is the assumed goal of policies that "best [serve] the greatest number of people." Many if not most Americans believe that what best serves the greatest number of citizens is leaving them well enough alone in most aspects of their lives. Our founding constitution reflects this belief. I suspect that's not what you mean.
You seem to feel that you're saying something new, but using a central bureaucracy to produce numbers that determine the distribution of wealth, healthcare, job creation, energy production, etc., is certainly the big government, progressive approach that was employed by Mussolini's fascist regime. You may not like the label, but it works for me.
larry d, Perhaps we should walk the walk of the Professor's post. Is is possible that you and I can reach a point of reconciliation on the issue of measuring the worth/cost of proposed legislation? For lack of personal knowledge of a better qualified group, I have suggested, on behalf of the solutionists, that the nonpartisian CBO do the math and provide projections of fiscal impact for Issue (pick one). Since you seem to distrust the CBO, please suggest another group or method that you and the other geniuses believe would do a more accurate job.
I don't distrust the CBO, Dan. S. What you propose in your latest post is what the CBO has been doing from the start, as far as I can tell. What you implied in your initial post was a centralized bureaucracy that would in effect be creating policy via accounting under the rubric of "what's best for the greatest number of people." That part seems myopic and nightmarish to me.
Jon are dead-on. You reminded me that the Vice-Presidency used to go to the guy who got the second most votes in the electoral college. And the only real job of the VP is president of the senate. When both side agree, it usually means the populace is getting it stuck to them. Patriot act, ever expanding commerce clause, etc.
There is a conventional wisdom that says if both sides are a little annoyed with the referee, then he probably did a good job. And that compromise leads to good. I disagree.
It reminds me of my favorite Ayn Rand quote 'There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.'
I doesn't matter if you think abortion is women's health care or murder, the current status quo is wrong. Or closer to home, Governor Strickland commuted Kevin Keith's death sentence to life without parole. In reality this basically guarantees that justice will not happen. She does not say the middle is wrong, she uses the word evil.
Bipartisanship is the brook that slowly winds past us eroding our rights.
I have to agree that compromise is not always good, and the middle of the road is where you find roadkill. So maybe the two irreconcilable sides should just fight until someone wins. That makes sense if someone is going to win soon. But if the two sides are at a stalemate, the mounting casualties and collateral damage add up. After decades of conflict in various places all around the world, is the best advice to both sides really to stick to your guns? While the world burns?
I must say that I've seen this reconciliation "meme" come up here and there in the last month or so, since about the time that even lefty bloggers came to realize that the elections in November are going to be a disaster for the powers that be. Where were these calls when Nancy Pelosi and other prominent lefties were calling "teabaggers" violent Nazis, when Obama was telling Republican congress members to "get out of the way" and "we won," etc., etc.?
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