Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Wrangling over debt ceiling shows that Congress has a strange definition of ‘functional government’
By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board
Saturday, August 06, 2011 

When it was all over and he had helped broker a deal that allowed the United States to pay its bills on time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the critics were wrong. 

“It may have been messy. It might have appeared to some like their government wasn’t working,” the Kentucky Republican told The Washington Post. “But, in fact, the opposite was true.” 

His Democratic counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid, was equally insistent that those -- including President Barack Obama -- who called Washington “dysfunctional” were mistaken. He reminded the National Journal that, in 1856, a pro-slavery member of the House had walked into the Senate chambers and used his cane to pummel a prominent abolitionist. 

Sorry, senators, but if the absence of physical violence -- or the passage of a complicated deal that may not actually curb Washington’s voracious spending -- is the best measure of government’s effectiveness, then Americans have every right to be upset, frustrated and maybe a little frightened about the nation’s future. A CNN poll taken after Capitol Hill leaders and the White House struck their debt-ceiling deal found that only 14 percent of Americans approved of how Congress has been doing its job. That is a record low approval rating. 

And, frankly, much deserved. 

Consider for a moment that Reid and McConnell are members of a legislative body so riven by mistrust that even though it is now on a monthlong break, it has not formally recessed. That’s because Republicans fear Obama will use a constitutional bypass to fill key administration jobs if there’s an actual recess. They may be right: Since the GOP minority uses Senate rules to block many Obama nominees, an end run surely would be tempting. And so, to maintain the pretense of business as usual, a handful of senators will remain at the Capitol this month and hold periodic pro forma sessions -- Friday’s lasted 39 seconds. 

But that odd bit of theater pales in comparison to the debt battle that tied up Capitol Hill and the White House for weeks. Each chamber advanced bills the other was certain to reject. On the House floor, members openly hooted, booed and taunted one another. Ideological partisans repeatedly killed efforts to address critical entitlement and revenue issues. Some members insisted to the very end that it wouldn’t matter if the country defaulted. 

And throughout this trench warfare, issues of real importance to the American people -- as noted in the editorial below -- were ignored. 

We are not naive. We understand that the founders built conflict -- checks and balances -- into the Constitution. We understand that the parties have deep philosophical disagreements -- our editorial board often does, too. But not so long ago, there was a line between campaigning and governing. Partisanship reigned during campaigns, then went on hiatus when it was time to govern and get at least a few things done. Now we have permanent campaigns -- a reality acknowledged by McConnell when he said his top priority in this Congress was to ensure Obama’s defeat in 2012. 

There have been many steps on this path to dysfunction. 

As writer Bill Bishop observed in”The Big Sort,” Americans increasingly have segregated themselves not just by race and class, but by cultural values. Computer-aided gerrymanders then cluster those like-minded voters into congressional districts where primaries -- policed by ideologues -- decide who will hold safe seats. Money, once raised almost exclusively within a candidate’s district or state, increasingly comes from outside interest groups. 

All of that pushes Democrats left, Republicans right, leaving most voters in the middle -- and all too often simply leaves them out. It makes moderates of any stripe hard to find at the national level -- even though large numbers of Americans describe themselves as political moderates or independents. 

With the rise of openly partisan news organizations and websites, more and more Americans choose to hear only one side of any story. As we saw throughout the debt fight, people who see the world as black or white regard “compromise” as a dirty word. And yet compromise is fundamental to the American system; the Constitution is full of compromises. 

America needs leaders in the truest sense, who are willing to put the nation’s good above that of their party or even themselves. Neither Obama nor Republican House Speaker John Boehner could ultimately deliver, but at least they tried to craft a bargain rooted in realism -- the president by offering changes to Social Security and Medicare, the speaker by suggesting closing loopholes to raise revenue. The fact that their parties torpedoed them does not bode well. 

One of Obama’s most popular promises in 2008 echoed one made by George W. Bush in 2000: Each pledged to change the tone of Washington. The fact neither succeeded cannot stop the efforts to try. Overheated rhetoric and political paralysis won’t solve America’s problems. What apparently looks just fine from the Senate floor is profoundly disappointing anywhere else. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer