![]() I also experienced in that period the sharp ideological shift to the right by House Republicans. In each presidency the congressional opposition had some partisan incentive to embarrass the President but we, unlike them, also felt an obligation to keep government functioning in a manner appropriate to the need. As Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke document in their memoirs, I spent much of the first two years of my Financial Services Committee chairmanship defending them - and the President who appointed and supported them - against increasingly angry right-wing Republican attacks. Bush much more support in coping with the financial crisis than the Republicans gave Barack Obama. This explains, for example, why we Democrats gave George W. Perhaps the biggest shift over the past eight years is how far that commitment has fallen out of favor among those who now dominate Republican primary contests. One major dividing line between the dominant factions in each party today is, literally, their commitment to government in general, over and above any specific set of policies. I believe that the recent speakership debacle and the current presidential nominating contest demonstrate that the Republicans have moved further right on the issues than the Democrats have gone left.īut even these who reject this point can’t deny that there’s a stark difference between the parties on the critical question of whether they’re willing to compromise to be sure government functions effectively. It is true that the center of political gravity in each party has moved further from the center. First, it assumes a false equivalence between the parties. There are two serious flaws in this description. That mistake is assuming that the problem is too many ideological members of Congress, of both parties, who would rather shut things down rather than compromise. I’m writing this not to defend my former colleagues in elected office, highly as I regard many of them, but to correct a widespread misperception that not only diverts attention from what needs to be done, but in fact exacerbates the situation. This unwarranted, excessive negativism has a real effect on the electorate’s behavior, and in turn creates a pattern of voting - and equally important, non-voting - that determines which efforts to improve things will succeed and which are very likely to fail. But there’s another, perhaps deeper reason, one that’s both a cause and an effect of the political dysfunction from which we now suffer: a sharp decline in the public’s belief that government works.
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