(Please welcome another contributor to Rise of the Center, Andrew Stewart. I believe I cross paths with Andrew first on twitter. He’s commented here, he has a blog that I think is high quality, and I think his content will be a good fit here, when he wants to cross post it. Along with a few of the other new contributors that have come on recently, we should have a decent stream of moderate and more in depth content now.)

President Obama has an important choice to make.

With all indications pointing to a Republican takeover of the House and possibly even the Senate, it is becoming clear that the Democrats super majority is coming to an end and the President is going to have to decide how he will proceed with that reality in mind.  Ezra Klein and Mark Schmitt have wondered aloud what a Republican majority would do, musing back and forth between obstructing the Republican Congress or transforming his own agenda into one that Republicans could collaborate on, or at least support.

A lot of gut reaction comments throughout the various news sites and blogs join the popular refrain that goes a little something like, “Republicans will continue to obstruct because that’s all they know”.  You know, the Party of No.  This is a line toted by those with either poor memory, poor understanding of two party politics, or both.  It’s not that Republicans are by their nature obstructionist, it’s that minority parties are obstructionist.  If a party has no power to pass legislation nor set the agenda, it is the party in the majority that the electorate will perceive as owning the legislative process.

A party with neither a President nor majorities in both chambers of Congress has only one viable option; to obstruct the passage of the majority party’s preferred legislation and bide their time until the next election cycle.  Any non-obstructionist strategy is only likely to prolong the minority party’s situation by lending support to the majority party’s ability to govern.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans alike have been the Party of No in their own time, and will continue to do so so long as we politic in a two party system.

A divided government, however, with a Republican majority in one or both chambers, will not benefit an obstructionist approach as that party will be perceived as sharing ownership over Congressional power and will likewise be held accountable by the electorate should it fail to govern effectively.  While many might speculate that Republicans are indeed in possession of the boundless lack of sense it would require in order to ignore this fact, it is more likely that they are quite aware of it, as memory should serve to show that the GOP has demonstrated an adherence to this principal as recently as 1995; when a Democratic President came to govern with a Republican Congress.

Klein and Schmitt seem to agree, the more interesting and realistic question is what will President Obama do?  After all, it’s the President’s agenda to set.  Will he follow in the footsteps of Carter’s steadfast devotion to his preferred agenda all the way to a one-term legacy?  Or will he attempt, like Clinton, to work with a Republican Congress on a more pragmatic, compromised agenda?  Failure by Republicans to contribute viable ideas in such a situation would be political suicide.  The GOP in 1995 tried conflict with the White House with their government shut down and failed, ultimately pursuing welfare reform in collaboration with Clinton.

Can Obama and Boehner work together in a divided government?  Probably not, for all the reasons listed here.  But as stated above, even Gingrrich and Clinton didn’t start off on a cooperative footing.  The point is that with divided government, what follows isn’t going to be obvious.  There are no foregone conclusions in the process of compromise.  Democracy isn’t about attaining majorities in order to strong arm your agenda into law, it’s about a power sharing arrangement whereby all interested parties can participate in the decision making process.  This ideal is always going to be more difficult to achieve outside a divided government, but within it exists a potential engine for the right kind of creativity that will finally advance our politics into the 21st century.

Timothy Garton Ash of the Guardian writes that Obama must wish he were recently elected Prime Minister David Cameron, who falling short of the parliamentary votes necessary to reach a full majority, formed a surprising coalition with the center-left Liberal Democrats lead by Nick Clegg.  The only fact more interesting is that this coalition of strange bedfellows has been surprisingly successful, and Ash seems to conclude that Obama should be getting this same degree of cooperation from the opposing minority party.  But it’s here that Ash, like many others, is missing the point.

All of this lofty talk of grand coalitions, third party ascent, and Bloomburg style independent candidates tends to mistakingly come with expectations of ones own particular breed of political agenda prevailing.  But again that’s not what democracy truly is about, and that’s not what has made the Cameron / Clegg partnership possible.  Obama did not become President because of the Progressive agenda he campaigned to his base on, he was elected because of the Independents whom he promised an era of post-partisan politics to.  And likewise, if the GOP recaptures Congress this November, it won’t be because of a sudden affinity for social conservative values among Independents.  Both parties need to set aside their crusades to shape society with their respective ideals, and focus on somehow cooperating to govern a country where half of the populace are not going to agree with those ideals.

I suggest you watch the actual video of Nick Clegg speaking in his own words, because it is truly stunning, but I will quote him here:

“We [David Cameron and himself] work very well together. I don’t think either of us goes into this looking for sorta friendship.  That’s not the point. The point is do we both understand that no party won the majority in the election.  The people said very clearly they do not want to give the keys to #10 to any single party, so we have to work together in the national interest.  We want to work together in the national interest.  And we both approach that task practically, without dogmatism, not being doctrinal about everything, making sure that we accommodate each others concerns and values.”

Because our election system is flawed with the assumption that the electorate in fact want one of the participating parties to win (as opposed to ‘none of the above’), we do not have the luxury of sending so blunt a message to the political elites.  Neither party is winning the hearts and minds of moderates, centrists and independents; the two party system simply denies us a practical alternative to two flat out losers.  But at least we can have divided government, if President Obama chooses the path of Clinton and a GOP Congress the path lead by Gingrich before.  Or, better yet, the path chosen by Cameron and Clegg.

Many on either side would not be happy about the idealogical sacrifices necessary for such cooperation to exist, but such sacrifice is the foundation of coexistence within a democracy.

Read more of Andrew’s work at Endecast…

About Solomon Kleinsmith

I started this site in the summer of 2010, really just as a hobby at first. But I'm pretty ambitious, and between being able to recruit some great bloggers to join the team here, putting a ton of work into the site and attracting a lot of traffic through Twitter, we've grown very fast for a young blog with next to no budget.

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