The Case That Divided Government is Irrelevant

One of the rationales brought up by people this election season for voting for John McCain is that with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, this would create a problematic scenario. I think this idea is mostly ridiculous.

Michael Merritt lays out what he considers unified government:

What is unified government? I define this as the executive and legislative branches being controlled by the same party. In Congress, it means that both the House and Senate have comfortable enough margins of power to get their agenda passed swiftly without too much work.

I disagree with this characterization. One party has total control only if they have 60 members of the Senate, one reasons liberals are going crazy over that number this year. This is exceptionally unlikely to happen this year. Nate Silver projects that there is only about a 17% chance of that happening given the electorate.

Republicans did also not have 60 members in the Senate. So what happened? All of the partisan elements of Bush’s domestic agenda the past six years were either thwarted (Social Security) or co-opted by Democrats for various reasons (Tax Cuts, Energy Bill, FISA). The less partisan bills (No Child Left Behind, post-Katrina Bills) were in many cases co-authored by Democrats. There are other bills, such as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Medicare Bill that fit into both categories to a certain extent. None of these depended on who held a majority in Congress; if Democrats had a slim lead on Republicans, much of the same would happen. The FISA Compromise in the Senate right now is indicatibe of that. The immediate effect of a new President in domestic policy is regulatory power; ability to set new standards, to appoint partisans to regulatory commissions, and whatnot. That is usually unhindered by Congress, except in extreme cases. This was similar for the Clinton administration: the partisan health care attempt failed, even with a majority of Democrats.

Moreover, in terms of foriegn policy, the development the past 50 years has strongly favored the President over Congress. Indeed, Bush has been able to do almost whatever he wanted in foreign policy, even after the Democrats took back Congress in 2006. Bill Clinton initiated the Kosovo campaign in the middle of being impeached.

The ultimate point is that in domestic policy, divided government is overrated. If one party has a supermajority, than they can accomplish very partisan things, such as what Democrats did in the early 60s. But there is little evidence that slight majorities change things dramatically either.

Merritt lays out other reasons.

1) Corruption

So why is having unified government so bad? Well, for starters, it leads to all sorts of corruption. You only need to look at the Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay and Mark Foley scandals to see what can happen when politicians get too comfortable with their own power. … As well as scandals in Congress, scandals in the executive branch can also go unchecked with unified government. Just look at the U.S. Attorney scandal, treatment of enemy combatants, and others.

Corruption is a worry not for divided government, but for parties that have any power whatsoever. As appealing as it would be if no party had power, that seems unrealistic. Moreover, it’s not just Republicans that have a monopoly on corruption; Democrats like William Jefferson are not squeaky clean, either.

As for Merritt’s second argument, Democrats have done absolutely nothing constructive regarding those scandals that they could not have done in the minority. Issuing unanswered subpoenas for instance. At best, you could argue that Democratic pressure made Alberto Gonzalez resign. But not even Republicans were not happy with him at the hearings.

2) Breakdown of Checks and Balances:

Merritt states:

Next, and arguably the worst, unified government creates a system where checks and balances break down, and the legislative and executive branches begin to take the country in too far of the wrong direction. Whether it’s more toward socialism or more toward laisse-faire capitalism doesn’t matter. When government is unified, the debate necessary to quash bad legislation just isn’t there, and the executive and party in control of the legislature can enact whatever they want without too much effort. Keep in mind that I speak of the kind of unified government that some commenters here are afraid of. That which has a large majority in the House (which the Democrats don’t quite have now but come close) and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate (which the Democrats don’t have now and probably won’t have even after this November).

As I noted above, the facts do not back this up; not at all. This type of strong push one way or another only occurs when one party has a supermajority, implicitly meaning that the people want the country to move in that direction. The reason is simple; the founding fathers created a system in the Senate that would check undivided government itself. Merritt completely glosses over this; he admits it exists, but does not want to trust it.

Less Partisanship:

At least with divided government, both sides are forced to compromise, at least in theory. This is in theory because it depends on how partisan minded your two parties are. If you get even one party that is unwilling to concede anything, then nothing gets done, as has often been the case with the current make-up of Congress. Yet, the partisanship we’ve seen isn’t so bad that we see no legislation come out of it. The Farm bill is just one example of where both parties got together to pass legislation.

This is also true when the same party is in control of Congress and the White House. I’ll take the Farm Bill and raise him every other bill I’ve mentioned: Tax Cuts, Energy Bill, Katrina Bills, No Child Left Behind, Medicare, etc. Even the poorly organized Democrats were able to negotiate somewhat with those. Moreover, even with undivided government, when negotiation failed, bills did not pass (Social Security).

Furthermore, I think the Farm Bill is a terrible example. Farm issues and immigration are two specific issues that naturally cut across both party lines. Support and Dissent on the bills is never aligned specifically by party. You find liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans agreeing to hate the Farm Bill, for instance. Somehow, I don’t think that what Merritt had in mind was that bipartisanship would emerge as a cabal of bipartisan representatives agreed to take money for their states.

There surely is some impact of divided government at the very margins. But that difference is dwarfed by the foreign policy differences between the candidates, even as their Iraq policies converge. It’s for that reason that I’ve defined myself as a foreign policy voter; if you want to effect a domestic policy, work and donate to Congress. For this Presidential election, too much is on the line in foreign policy to base a vote on marginal impacts of a divided government.