IF YOU BELIEVE THAT CHANGE IS NOT POSSIBLE IN WASHINGTON, you’re not alone. A few decades ago, Washington seemed to have vaccinated itself against change. It is an isolated place where fresh thinking and departure from convention are about as welcome as the August heat. Washington may be the only place in America where new thinking and innovation are punished, while those committed to maintaining the status quo receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
There are no Martin Luthers with a tack hammer in one hand and new ideas in the other. Nor is anyone like Martin Luther King Jr. marching over the Fourteenth Street Bridge singing “We Shall Overcome” and demanding change. The only outsider who would feel welcome in Washington is Rip Van Winkle because he could wake up after twenty-five years and the only thing that would have changed is the traffic. There would be more of it.
In politics, meaningful change almost always comes through the ballot box, and then only when the people have had enough. The 1980 and 1994 elections were like that. So was the one in 2006. The problem is that when the new replaces the old, the new often starts behaving like the old it replaced. That was true of many Republicans who vowed revolutionary change in the 1994 election. However, as history reveals, the new bunch may promise “the most ethical administration” in the nation’s history (Bill Clinton) or “the most ethical Congress ever” (Speaker Nancy Pelosi) but they usually end up like all the others, ensnared by temptation and entangled in scandals of their own making.
Sometimes policy causes the electorate to “throw the bums out.” Sometimes it is disgust over the general state of affairs with no one issue as the cause. In the 2006 election it was some of each. Democrats and independents were driven to the polls by growing frustration over Iraq, a series of ethics violations by Republicans, and spending on new and existing entitlement programs by Republicans that grew government and deepened the deficit. Many voters saw Republicans trying to maintain power for its own sake—a type of political entitlement—rather than using power to advance the country’s agenda. They thought the Republican Congress had lost its way and did not deserve to remain in the majority.
But each of these separate domestic issues stems from polarization. Deficits, entitlements, earmarks, all are about keeping power, and the way that power has been maintained over the last twenty-five years is by keeping polarization alive. Stay in power long enough in Washington and a sense of entitlement sets in, which leads politicians to believe they are untouchable and immune from the rules of conduct the rest of us must follow. That was why, in part, Mark Foley thought he could repeatedly contact former pages, and Bill Clinton thought he could have an affair in the White House. It was why Republicans used government programs and projects (once the exclusive purview of Democrats) as an insurance policy to keep power.
History tells us that politicians can abuse power for limited periods before the public loses its patience. Once voters reach a “tipping point,” no amount of projects or political commercials will change people’s minds. When voters decide to make a change, they are generally replacing the party in power in either Congress or the White House, or both.
American voters do not often make major changes, so parties can stay in power for long periods. We are not like other democracies whose governments can change every few years or even every few months. We like stability. That may seem surprising with today’s nonstop political combat and never-ending election cycles, but our country still has a strong desire for political stability. This is due in part to the large number of immigrants who come here from unstable nations and oppressive regimes. They craved stability in their native lands and never got it. When they settled in America, they voted for stability.
That may also explain why two major political parties have continued to dominate American politics. While third parties have occasionally been formed (the Bull Moose Party of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, the American Party of George Wallace in 1968, the independent candidacy of Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, and the Green Party of Ralph Nader in 2000), none has developed into a serious alternative to the Democrats or the Republicans.
Democrats trace their roots to Thomas Jefferson. The Republican family tree was planted by Alexander Hamilton, though the Republican Party was not formally organized until the 1850s. For our purposes, we’ll focus only on the parties from the twentieth century to the present. Much has changed in their philosophy and demographics over this period, but the two parties’ domination of the political system has not changed.
For the first third of the century, voters went back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in the White House and Congress. Republicans Roosevelt and Taft held the White House for twelve years (1900–1912). Republicans held Congress for the first ten of those years, and then the Democrats took the House the last two years (1910–1912). Democrats took the White House for the next eight years under Wilson (1913–1920); Democrats controlled Congress until the last two years of Wilson’s second term (1918–1920), when Republicans took the Senate. Two years later, the White House would go to Republicans for twelve years (1920–1932) under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Republicans controlled Congress until the last two years of that period, when the Democrats won the House (1930–1932), followed two years later by the Democrats taking control of both the White House and Congress.
Please excuse the social studies class, but it illustrates a point. Voter stability gave one party control of the White House and Congress for long periods of time. When the party in power lost favor with the voters, they sent a warning two years before each “wave” election by putting the opposition in power in one or both houses of Congress. Two years later, the party in power lost both the White House and Congress. The story repeated itself for thirty-two years. The conclusion was that voters liked stability, but when they turned, they did so in a crushing wave (hence the term wave election).
That voting pattern changed during the second third of the century, from 1932 through 1952. The Democrats, with a few exceptions, controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Republicans managed to win enough seats in 1946 to have a congressional majority, but that lasted only two years. So “normalcy” was defined as Democrats running the White House and Congress, especially the House of Representatives.
In 1954, however, the era of divided government became the rule rather than the exception. For forty of the next fifty-four years, Congress and the White House were divided between the parties. It seemed that voters liked the idea of checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches. Each time voters put one party in control of both branches during this period, a wave election ended one-party control (1980, 1994, and 2006). Each of these elections occurred as the polarization of American politics intensified.