Between inertia and political realignment
Perspective on the looming US government shutdown
As this looming government shutdown seems more and more inevitable it’s interesting to take a step back and examine it with a specific if you point: the power of inertia. Civic studies students are all able to tell you that the US Constitution and enshrines separation of powers between the three branches. As John Podhoretz intoned in caps: it’s divided government on purpose.
This means that getting anything done in the US political system warrants both sides to commit the proverbial pound of flesh. Outside observers of the DC maelstrom, mostly overseas, wonder why the lone superpower is in essence operating its trillion $ budget on a monthly basis. Way too few political pundits have reminded their readers and viewers that the last time Congress passed a budget with so-called regular order dates back to the Clinton era, in 1997.
This is where inertia as framework is useful: basic US government functions have been in disrepair for more than 20 years, yet the system chugs along. Inertia also maintains fiction of the current political divide between Democrats and GOP. It’s apparent to anyone with a historical perspective that’s the true divide now lies between realists committed to governance which implies compromise, versus culture warriors more interested in play acting their role and sending signals to their base instead of acting in the general interest. Commentary Magazine’s Noah Rothman has been developing this view over the past few months and Commentary’s podcast this week dealt with the American soul post-Stormy Daniels. Part of the arguments discussed dealt with how empirical hard data is routinely waved off by culture warriors on both sides. This is a telling sign in my view. Burt Lancaster as Prince Salina in Visconti‘s The Leopard has a memorable line (translations from the original Lampedusa text differ): “everything must change so that nothing changes”.
Political realities are often seen as ingrained until they shift with lightning speed, as shown by the astounding political realignment occurring in Europe. France’s Macron had the intuition in 2016 that both centre right and centre left parties were zombies. Against all odds and political advice, he pushed for what no one thought was possible, a new party explicitly founded to detonate the Gaullist Republican and the Socialists. His gutsy pitch to French voters and voters in 2017: there are progressive realists in both camps, let’s unite under the same banner, La République en Marche, which now is the majority party in the French National Assembly.
Back to DC, the hollowed out GOP and Democrats are ripe for a similar detonation, who will launch the first salvo ?
