BLAZER PROPHET
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I have a healthy respect for Gergen. Good read.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/27/opinion/gergen-polarized-politics/index.html?hpt=hp_c3
A small snippet:
Under heavy pressures for party conformity, legislation by nature becomes a more partisan undertaking. Hard to believe it now, but big programs like Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, or tax and Social Security reform in the 1980s, passed with broad bipartisan support.
Our latest legislative achievements, on the other hand (think health care, the stimulus or Wall Street reform), have been almost entirely driven by one party. More often than not, gridlock and obstruction soon follow. As scholar Bill Galston has wisely noted, it becomes "a zero-sum mentality: if they win, we lose."
As Galston and others have theorized, all this sniping saps the public's trust in the government, but it does something equally insidious, too: It saps trust between the parties, completing the vicious cycle and making compromise even tougher.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/27/opinion/gergen-polarized-politics/index.html?hpt=hp_c3
A small snippet:
Under heavy pressures for party conformity, legislation by nature becomes a more partisan undertaking. Hard to believe it now, but big programs like Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, or tax and Social Security reform in the 1980s, passed with broad bipartisan support.
Our latest legislative achievements, on the other hand (think health care, the stimulus or Wall Street reform), have been almost entirely driven by one party. More often than not, gridlock and obstruction soon follow. As scholar Bill Galston has wisely noted, it becomes "a zero-sum mentality: if they win, we lose."
As Galston and others have theorized, all this sniping saps the public's trust in the government, but it does something equally insidious, too: It saps trust between the parties, completing the vicious cycle and making compromise even tougher.
