Political polarization: Is it really that bad?

Observations about the growing level of political polarization are frequent. Democratic candidates blame Trump for fueling the fire and pledge to unite the country. Others observe the growing divide between “red and blue states,” and the divisions over Supreme Court nominees, budget proposals, and the interpretation of the Mueller Report. Our own frustration with the absence of compromise in Washington is a significant motivation of OurFutureAmerica®. But is it all true? Were there really ever any ”good old days” when Congress and the executive branch got along? Let’s try to be fact-based and rational.

Based on a few things that we can objectively measure, there is a good argument to be made that congressional behavior has in fact become more polarized and less collaborative over the past 30 years. 

The use of the filibuster, designed to impede a bill without bringing it to a vote, is one measure. While the number of filibusters is not officially measured, the votes to stop them, called cloture, are. During the decade of the 1970s, there were 87 such votes in the Senate. This number rose to 133 in the 1980s, 221 in the 1990s, 334 from 2000 to 2009, and 348 from 2010 to today.    

A second measure is the lack of consensus in the approval of Supreme Court justices. Historically, there was a view that the president had been duly elected and should be granted a certain amount of deference to govern. In fact, since 1866, and until 2016, presidents were allowed to place Supreme Court nominees under consideration prior to the election of their successor. That tradition came to a halt when the Republican Congress declined to consider President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. The same was true of lower-level judicial appointments, which declined from 90% in the 1980s to 50% during the Obama administration. 

A third measure is the severity of government shutdowns resulting from Congress failing to reach agreement on a budget. In the 1980s, there were four shutdowns, each lasting only one day. In the 1990s, there were three shutdowns, lasting a total of 29 days. Since then, there have been three more, lasting a total of 54 days. Furthermore, not since 1998 has Congress been able to agree on a complete federal budget by the deadline of September 30, and it has had to depend on continuing resolutions instead.

There are other examples that are less frequent but equally partisan. The impeachment of President Clinton was arguably highly partisan given that the impeachment and Senate trial were decided almost completely based on party lines. The Affordable Care Act of 1990 was decided without a single Republican vote. In 2017, Senator McCain was the sole Republican who voted against repeal, noting not that he favored the ACA but that he was against repeal along strictly party lines. 

Lastly, for those interested in reading more about this issue, we recommend The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism by Steve Kornacki. Kornacki makes a compelling case that the “good old days” in this narrow case did indeed exist.