A republic if you can keep it

By Mark Penn and Andrew Stein
Real Clear Wire

If the political parties continue to break down the norms in their quest for power, they will find that they win a lot of battles but lose the war for the American republic. This was exemplified in the wholly pointless Democrat-inspired shutdown for nearly 50 days that created massive doubt in the voters’ minds of both parties.

While Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party’s left flank were clearly the instigators, the reaction of the voters was simple – if these two parties can’t even keep the government open, a pox on both of them. And the ratings of everyone declined – the president, Congress, the Republicans, and the Democrats all now have ratings in the low 40s, according to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll. Economic concern also spiked as people feared further ramifications of the shutdown, as people were not getting paychecks, food stamps were endangered, and air traffic was becoming a tangled mess. In the end, it is not about Democrats or Republicans losing the shutdown – it is about America losing.

Kudos go to the brave Democrats who said “enough is enough” here and broke from their party to end this hat-tip to the left wing of the Democratic Party that wanted disruption no matter what the cost or the issue. They focused on one budget item – temporary COVID-era Obamacare subsidies with a time limit they themselves set – and were willing to hold up the entire government for an unlimited time to try to get their way, setting a precedent that the government could be shut down over any issue. They were going to prove they could resist President Donald Trump, no matter what it took or did to the country – they invented a kind of shutdown terrorism in which government employees and SNAP recipients were the collateral damage. 

The fight over congressional redistricting is going down a similar path. Former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder set up a nonprofit to supposedly ensure “fair” redistricting, but it really was a cover for trying to gain seats just for Democrats. What’s worse is that many of the big blue states are already so ridiculously gerrymandered. There are already far fewer Republican seats than should be the case in places like New York, California, and Illinois. So naturally, the Republicans moved to equalize the balance in Texas, prompting further indignant responses in California, and now there is gerrymander fever in all of the states looking to adjust the map to turn this system into a mini-electoral college – win the state’s geography battles and you win all the seats of the state. This would only further separate blue and red states and again make people believe that the whole system is rigged.

And the record regarding judicial nominations is no different. Federal judges needed 60 votes in the Senate for confirmation, which meant historically that picks with extreme right or left views had great difficulty being confirmed – until then-Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid adopted the so-called “nuclear option” and reduced it to 51 votes, allowing Democrats to name more left leaning judges on their own, prompting the Republicans to do the same for Supreme Court nominations. The result is more left- and right-leaning judges, with the Democrats promising payback whenever they gain control of the process. It seemed unlikely they would follow through on their threat to “pack” the high court, but if they would shut the government down for two months, it would take some senators willing to be a profile in courage to prevent that from happening.

Each of these moves has pleased the respective bases of the two major parties, angered the base of the other party, resulting in escalation, and left those in the middle disillusioned. If this cycle is not broken, both parties are essentially threatening to go over a cliff in a barrel, destroying the very system that created them and fulfilling the prophecy of George Washington, who predicted that factionalism was the greatest threat to the Republic.

And the built-in reactions to whatever a Democratic or Republican president does are following the same pattern. President Trump successfully dismantled the Iranian nuclear sites with a daring military raid, and that should have received uniform praise. Instead, the Democrats played politics even with what should have been a united front against a nuclear Iran. And so it goes with issue after issue, the policies they genuinely oppose are treated exactly the same as policies they would support if they were the ones enacting them. Partisanship gets built into everything, and the result is a divided population in which there are no winners, only losers and growing public distrust.

The senators who sided with the Republicans deserve praise as the kinds of senators that John F. Kennedy idolized in his book, “Profiles in Courage.” Of course they will get the enmity of the political bases and be threatened with primaries, but if the bases don’t wake up and realize that they need to govern first and foremost and play politics second, they will endanger the whole American experiment as it is about to celebrate its 250th Anniversary. As with the Republicans who refused to eliminate the filibuster here, they all need to realize that the key to governance is cooperation and collaboration, not combat. 

Mr. Penn was a pollster and adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, 1995-2008. He is chairman of the Harris Poll and CEO of Stagwell Inc.

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