Professor Geoffrey Stone’s op-ed summarizes exactly the Democrat talking points we’ll see between now and next November. The enemies of progress and cultural reconciliation are political obstruction and unrepentant greed. We all just need to compromise and everything will be better.
The Professor trots out the low approval rating of the Congress as evidence. If only the members would reach across the aisle for consensus, the American people would view them in a fairer light. Well, it turns out that while the institution of Congress polls pretty badly, most voters are basically OK with the representation they have from their district. Indeed, in a deliberative body that must run for re-election every two years – essentially a perennial campaign – any member who strays far from the consensus in his or her district doesn’t last long. The quickest way to lose your seat in Congress is to have the voters from your district discover that you have compromised with the opposition. This is understood very well by those who hold seats for multiple terms.
I submit that this is exactly the process that the Founding Fathers intended. Their model was for vigorous, even rancorous, open and public debate of issues in the US House. If there isn’t sufficient middle ground to wrangle 218 votes, so be it. In the eyes of the Founders, to do nothing is better than to do the wrong thing, especially in the area of taxes and expenditures. So the irritatingly fractious House has most of the Constitutional taxing authority. This, too, was deliberate.
As a country, we slog along with Congress polling miserably, but members satisfy at least a majority in their districts, or else they get the boot. And the boot comes around every two years. That doesn’t provide much time for voters to forget mistakes. Like the Founders, I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s when the pols start getting together and agreeing on things that I get nervous.
— Frank McCoy, Forest Lake
