When Steve Benen said that last year’s debt ceiling fiasco was the worst thing an American political party has done since the Civil War, it got me thinking. The Palmer Raids were more an executive branch thing than a congressional one. Republican isolationism in the face of the rise of Hitler, Stalin, and a militant Japan was foolish but also very understandable. The Republican establishment, including the Eisenhower administration, wasn’t too keen on McCarthyism. Even the brutal Jim Crow regime of the Southern Democrats was just that, southern. And if the Democrats deserve a ton of blame for committing us to propping up South Vietnam’s government, they didn’t actually start that policy and they were being pressured into it by the other side. The truth is that, either through shared blame or lack of party unity, no single party can be blamed for doing anything as stupid as the debt ceiling fiasco since the Civil War. The closest I can come is the lockstep support the GOP gave to President Bush and Dick Cheney as they walked us repeatedly into the threshing blades (full credit to driftglass for the imagery].
But when I really think about it, the debt ceiling fiasco isn’t a stand alone thing. It’s part of a continuum. You can’t just cherry-pick the debt ceiling fiasco and forget about the politicization of the Department of Justice, or putting an Arabian horse trader in charge of New Orleans’ safety, or blowing off any planning and just declaring, “Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out.” What’s the worst thing the GOP has done in the seventeen years since they first took control of Congress? Shutting down the government? Impeaching President Clinton? Stealing the 2000 election? Running the economy into the ground?
It’s not that the debt ceiling was the worst or stupidest thing that any American political party has done in 150 years. It’s the Republican Party that is the worst party we’ve had in 150 years.
Yes, when I think of the tens or even hundreds of thousands of people who’ve died as a result of our AA+ bond rating and two quarters of reduced (while still non-negative) economic growth, it just breaks my heart…
For fuck’s sake.
Is the term worst (and not worse) appropriate when there have only been two parties of any significance?
you’re dissing the Bull Moose Party, now?
Don’t forget the Whigs. 🙂
And the Reform Party. That was less than 20 years ago.
And of course the Socialist Party – Debs may not have won any electoral votes, but the party did make some inroads down-ballot back before the Red Scares took their toll.
there have only been two parties of any significance?
I think it’s meant more like this – I know nothing about baseball so choosing a team at random – like saying “this year’s Red Sox are the worst team they’ve ever been.” There’s the concept of the party/team as a single thing (that may once have been a fine party or won the World Series, resp.), and the concept of the current membership of the party or team.
In that sense, the Republican Party of 2012 is entirely different from, say, the Republican Party of Eisenhower’s time, and can be a much worse party even though it is nominally the same party.
Continuing that analogy, the modern Republican Party is more like the Boston Red Sox when they were owned by the Yawkeys. Institutionally stupid, racist, sentimental losers who were an embarrassment to their profession.
Yes, Xechy is correct.
Think of the parties as having iterations. You can define those iterations in different ways with different durations, so the GOP since the Gingrich Revolution (1995-present) or since Obama took office (2009-present) or since the Tea Party Movement started electing officials (2011-present). All of the above can be accurately described as the worst party we’ve seen since the Civil War.
I think Benen is sythesizing ideas from Mann and Ornstein here- their book, WaPo article and their recent NPR interview. It sounds quite similar except there is a bit different spin on comparing now with before the Civil War.
I can’t help but put this in the context of The Fourth Turning (which I mentioned a couple of days back). By their historical analysis, that’s exactly what one should expect: that political dysfunction reaches such levels at the beginning of each crisis phase which happens roughly every 80 years.
The book was written in 1997, and expected a crisis phase to begin by around 2007, and to last roughly 20 years. However, they expect that it takes another round of more severe crisis to really usher in a change in politics, and that’s expected to happen in the early years or so of the crisis (i.e. within the next couple of years). So for better or worse we may be looking at more crisis, followed by an end to political stupidity.
While the pattern they identify in the book is not meant to be exact, I’m surprised how accurate it seems to be.
One key difference between Benen and Mann/Ornstein, is that Benen talks about the “worst thing since”. “Thing” is a little vague. Mann/Ornstein are focused on extreme tactics and polarization. Aside from that, Benen could have taken everything from the book.
Compare this to Benen’s post—
Mann and Ornstein took inspiration for the title of their book, “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks” from the debt ceiling debaucle. They dedicate the first chapter to documenting how congressional Republicans went to his dangerous unprecedented extreme. Their observations are not directed per se at extreme policies, but at the extreme tactics that make Congress so dysfunctional. Their concern is the intense polarization this creates and how that precludes anything getting done.
Also in their first chapter they point out McConnell’s remarks about this being the Republican “template of the future”.
Good book. Be sure to read it:
http://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=
1337177742&sr=8-1
They reference the Civil War twice in the book. Once is discussing the extreme tactics used now to block of appointments. They refer to this as the “new nullification” after the practice in pre-war southern states. They also reference pre-Civil War as a time of intense polarization.
On NPR Ornstein had an interesting reference to the Civil War as baseline for the extreme polarization and dysfunction:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151522725/even-worse-than-it-looks-extremism-in-congress
I don’t know if it is literally the worst or stupidest thing any party has done in the last 150 years, but it’s certainly right up there. If I may repeat my own comment to your post “How This All Got Started”,
August 7th, 2011:
” … the fundamental flaw in the Tea Party’s strategy: you don’t start to control spending by unilaterally refusing to pay the bills you already have. That creates new and even worse problems. That should be obvious, even for a family budget. “You know dear, I think we have to go on a budget.” “OK — let’s start by refusing to pay our outstanding bills, that will save lots of money. Even if you think we should, I’m not going to let you. It’s for your own good.” I mean, that’s just plain moronic, isn’t it?”
Of course there is method in their madness. If you restrict your range of options to what makes sense, then you’re excluding a lot of alternatives. So if the options that make sense lead to undesirable outcomes, then go for options that make no sense. What with party allegiance, sparkly sound bites, and the “objective” journalism that gives any statement or position from your side the same plausibility as any statement or position from the other side, you are guaranteed to carry a certain percentage of the public with you no matter how stupid your position. That percentage, as we have learned, is 27%. But as long as you can obstruct the administration, it’s a plus.
I think that’s more like their real rationale. So it would be interesting to see a critique, from a political science POV, of that strategy.
In a nutshell, I would suggest: it works pretty well in its immediate objectives. But the disadvantages are that it also stirs up a lot of unaccounted “externalities” that gradually put you at a strategic disadvantage: these can be grouped under the headings of (a) no positive accomplishments (b) bad karma (c) utter predictability.