The Washington Post writes up John Oliver’s latest contribution:
John Oliver devoted a segment on his show last night to talking about the importance of state-level elections. He’s dead on: With divided government, whoever controls the Senate will only have limited sway over the national agenda. Intraparty disputes and partisan rancor will ensure that Congress remains as impotent as ever.
“This Congress is shaping up to be the least productive in history,” Oliver said . “Although to be fair, Congress is like jazz — it’s really about the bills it’s not passing. It’s also like jazz in that most people hate it and anyone who says they don’t are lying. And the Senate is likely to remain inactive.”
Oliver added, “Down at the local level, everything is happening.”
There might be a good bit of truth to this pessimistic view about the congressional elections, and Oliver is right that these local and state elections are making the midterms especially exciting. Voters’ choices in gubernatorial races and state house elections and on ballot initiatives this year will have important consequences.
I don’t understand why this view is deemed to be “pessimistic.” First off, unless one considers that the role of a legislature is to pass as much as legislation as it possibly can, Oliver’s disappointment is seriously misplaced. You’re damn straight that “Congress is like jazz — it’s really about the bills it’s not passing.” It’s a representative body; not a rule factory. The reason we have a political system at all is that people disagree as to what the government should do, and we aren’t wild about those people resolving their disagreements violently. Whatever John Oliver might believe, then, it is not only acceptable for one part of the system to refuse to acquiesce to the demands of another, it’s downright routine. This is what happened when George W. Bush wanted to privatize Social Security; it’s what happened when Barack Obama wanted to institute a carbon tax; and it’s what will likely happen when a Republican Congress tries to repeal Obamacare or amend the tax code or do anything else that does not meet the approval of around half the country. This tendency isn’t a “problem” or a “bug.” It’s how the structure was explicitly designed. In America, the system yields competing mandates, and, when they come into conflict, nothing happens. As David Harsanyi puts it this morning, “two forces slamming into each other is not inaction.” What is it? It’s balance.
Second, we should not be surprised or horrified that state-level elections are important, nor that “down at the local level, everything is happening.” This, too, is how the system is supposed to work. The United States are just that: united states. There is a federal government, to which certain enumerated powers have been delegated. This government is powerful, in its own way, yes. But it was ultimately intended to be neither a national behemoth nor a replacement for local governments. Instead, it was supposed to fill a certain role and to leave everything else to the states. Of late, Washington D.C. has become increasingly powerful and intrusive, the most effective practical check on its authority being that those would exercise the levers cannot agree when and how to pull them. So the important decisions will be taken at the local level for the foreseeable future? Good! That’s not a violation of the American settlement; it’s a return to the way that things are supposed to be.