Financial Times Editorial Comment: Division of power

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Division of power
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: September 1 2010 22:07 | Last updated: September 1 2010 22:07
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9a30b80-b5fe-11df-a048-00144feabdc0.html


Concern is growing in Barack Obama’s Democratic party about November’s midterm elections. With two months to go, things could change, but the mood in the party is sombre. Polls point to a “wave election” as sweeping as that of 1994, which forced Bill Clinton to work with Republicans and put his presidency on an entirely new course. This may be what many centrist voters, switching in droves from the Democrats to the Republicans, wish to force on Mr Obama.

Democrats have a 39-seat majority in the House of Representatives. The shift in opinion and the added intensity of Republican supporters – they are more likely to vote – leads many pollsters to forecast that the House will switch. Until recently, the idea that the Democrats’ Senate majority might go as well was unthinkable: not all of the seats are up for election and, taken together, those that are lean Democratic. Yet pollsters now see a Republican Senate as possible.

Should US voters want divided government? It has succeeded before. After 1994, the Clinton administration worked with a Republican Congress and had some notable successes. But things are different in 2010. The outlook for that kind of co-operation is much less promising.

One difficulty is that Mr Obama – though pragmatic and willing to compromise when he must – is no instinctive centrist, as Mr Clinton was. A bigger obstacle is that the Republican party has moved to the uncompromising right. If it does well in November, its sights will shift to 2012 and ejecting Mr Obama from the White House. Moreover, it will have been rewarded for mere opposition, since at present it has no actual policies. The risk of bitter gridlock on Capitol Hill is far greater than after 1994.

Many voters may think: fine – gridlock would be better than an unimpeded all-liberal agenda. In part, Democrats have brought this on themselves, by seeming to dismiss centrist voters’ concerns about the scope of the party’s ambitions. But outright paralysis would be dangerous. The US faces big policy challenges that cannot wait: fiscal reform and immigration reform, to name but two.

The Democratic party’s tin ear for voter discontent and the Republican party’s reflexive, unconstructive opposition to the administration are a poisonous mixture. If the election leads both to rethink, well and good. If it confirms them in mutual loathing, as seems all too likely, the next two years could be grim.