Before Trump Became President Jonathan Rauch Asked How We Got Here? I Look At His Answers and See What They Might Tell Us In A Post-Trump America

 

In the last decade the question one hears about so much political discourse, particularly from the left as well as Democrats (not always the same thing) was simple: "How did American politics get to the point to let Trump become President?"

Having spent enough time among progressive newsletters, websites and blogs like this one: I've essentially gotten about a hundred variations of the same answer: the right did it. The narrative, if it is coherent, argues that ever since the 1970s, Republicans backed by the corporate oligarchs, the religious right and various white supremacists, have worked to undermine the many safeguards America put in place after Watergate. The laundry list is always the same: think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist society, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, certain Republican villains (Reagan, Gingrich and McConnell are the most common names) spent years setting up a system to subvert all three branches of government, create cable news networks that indoctrinated the naïve followers and have subverted the system of checks and balances by using the electoral college and the power of small states to subvert the will of the overwhelming liberal and progressive majority of the country to lead our nation to the state that Trump was just a symptom of all this and didn't cause anything that wasn't already there.

It's a persuasive argument for quite a few reasons. The historical record bares out that all of these things actually happened in our society and by doing so it completely absolves the left's role in any of it at every level: from their protesting during the leadup to the 1968 convention that caused just enough of a shift in the vote to swing the election to Nixon to the increasing withdrawal of the left from politics more or less after the McGovern debacle to the constant equating there is no difference between the two parties, leading many people to vote for Nader in 2000 ensuring that W won.

I've recently been looking at a series of articles written by staff members of The Atlantic over the past several years. The Atlantic is a liberal magazine but has mostly remained objective even as that very idea has been argued as something all good institutions should throw away after the rise of Trump. One such article was written by Jonathan Rauch in July/August of 2016 in which he asked the same question we've all been asking: "What's Ailing American Politics?"

In this article he argues that many of those very reforms and safeguards American institutions have put in place in the half century prior to 2016 were collectively responsible for the situation we find ourselves in today. If nothing else this is a novel approach, arguing that the way we tried to fix the system has in many ways done much to break it. The third and most pertinent reason I'm inclined to listen to Rauch is that "Back in the 1970s, as a teenager in the post-Watergate era, I was on their side."  That he is willing to look back and admit he might have been misguided is enough for me to take him seriously. Even before Trump arrived on the scene both sides of the political spectrum had more than doubled down on the idea of never admitting you were wrong in any argument, no matter the circumstances.

And it is worth noting that so many of these reforms that have taken place over the years had bipartisan support at least initially and were all part of the body politics so long that changed them seems unthinkable. This doesn't mean Rauch is correct in all of his assumptions: indeed I disagree with him on a couple of them. But as we will have to navigate a post-Trump world – and unlike so many of my colleagues, I do believe that is on the horizon – we need to at least seriously consider how we got there so we can figure out if there is a way to fix them,

So in this article I will briefly look at Rauch's five central arguments and why I believe he is right or why he is wrong. Each of them are long enough to take up separate articles and indeed I may deal with them all in more detail. But for now, let's look at the basics

 

Reformation of the nomination process for all candidates running for office.

This argument was actually very much en vogue during Obama's first term, particularly when it came to the Presidency. Rauch's argument involves how party leaders had ways to influence nominations and vet candidates not just for the White House but for all Congressional offices. He also makes the convincing argument about how voter turnout in primaries across the board is always low in both parties: usually between 15 and 20 percent at the most.

He also argues that 'party leaders of your did a better job of getting qualified mainstream candidates to challenge incumbents.' This is a straw man argument, as it's difficult to believe one could find someone as unqualified to run for Congress as Marjorie Taylor Greene for Republicans or Alexandria Ocasio-Cotez for Democrats.

Basically all of these arguments are a call-back to the so-called smoke-filled room when party bosses could make choices for who ran for office without anybody else making up their mind. The problem is this logic doesn't hold water when you consider that at no point in the selection process were the voters allowed to have influence. The party bosses chose who ran for every office and then they got the voters excited about them. Furthermore well into the 1940s, these races were sown up by machines who we're more than willing to use these elected officials to control politics at every level. It was the same corruption as we see today, it was just exclusively for white men. (I'll be dealing with that again later on.)

Rauch even acknowledges as much when he says that Prescott Bush got his start in politics from one of the top executives at Pan Am. He's not so subtly arguing that industrial executives may have a better view of politics than the average voter which shows bias in the worst way. He also leaves out the fact that all of these financial and political powers didn't want the boat rocked and that meant no reforms for the system anywhere. He also removes the issue of the implicit racial bias exacted by the South over Democratic party nominations for over a century, blocking even the idea of either reform or civil rights.

And as a result during this period of power brokers from 1836 to the mid-1970s the overwhelming majority of presidential; candidates of both parties were mediocrities at best. Lincoln, Wilson and FDR were the exceptions to this rule; far more often we would get Pierce, Buchanan, Grant and Harding, all chosen by the bosses and all considered the worst Presidents in history. And those I should add were the ones who won the White House; most of the losing candidates were no better. Lewis Cass, James Cox and Horatio Seymour barely ranks as answer to Jeopardy questions.

It is hard to deny, especially after last year, that the political primary on so many levels is the worst way to pick a candidate. But the rest of the sentence 'except for all the others' is just as applicable when you consider the 140 plus years when the public had no choice in the matter. Rauch says that whether  the switch to direct public nominations a net benefit or a drawback is subjective. I don't agree because any process that allows the people, no matter how small a group, to have a voice in who their leaders are, should always be preferable to having none. One could make a convincing argument that for most of our country's history we were closer to an oligarchy then a true democracy: yes the voters had choices who the vote for in November but those choices themselves had been made by the same kinds of powerful people that so many today demean.

As for the problem with party purity that leads to the fear of being primaried, that is a valid concern and I can't deny that is a problem as does the issue of gerrymandering which is becoming just as problematic in the Democratic Party as Republican. That being said I still reject the argument Rauch raises here. I may not be able to see a way forward but going backward isn't the answer either.

 

Attempting to get dirty money out of politics.

Rauch argues that the tightening web of regulation for campaign finance was to reduce the idea of corruption and special interests. But he points out the fundamental reality that you can't eliminate money from politics. All that it did was divert the money from being raised by the political parties and outsource it to special interest groups; PACS, 501 C (4)S and various 527 groups. He also reminds that even after Citizen United formerly weaponized money as speech, there were various political machines on the left as well as the right, most notably Tom Steyer's NextGen America. In the 2014 midterms Steyer supported Terry McCauiliffe's run for Governor for Virginia and also supported Democrats in four Senate races and three gubernatorial races. By the end of that year he was the single largest donor in American politics – something I don't remember seeing in all of those progressive newsletter that spent so much time arguing how the Koch brothers and American Crossroads had destroyed America.

Rauch argues that because these groups rely on purism, protest and parochialism, the outside groups are driving towards politics towards polarization, extremism and short-term gain. And it was clearly having an effect on the state party. Rauch quotes a mountain state Democrat arguing that the internal conversation they'd been having is 'How do we keep state parties alive?" A southern state Republican party director asked the same story.

In the aftermath of 2016 the situation has hurt the Democrats far more at a state level, particularly in rural and southern states. The Justice Democrats have done nothing to make the situation for state parties across the board and considering their own strict rules on campaign contributions, they have precious little show for their own purity and extremism and not even much short-term gain to show for it in eight years. Yet it is from them that by far the greatest argument for campaign finance reform comes the loudest though paradoxically their platform basically involves as much money being spent as possible as the solution to all of their reforms on no less than four bills that they have made part of their platform (Medicare for All, Free College Tuition, The Raise the Wage Act and Taxing Wall Street).

 A central part of their platform is publicly funded elections which in all the years prior to Citizen United has only managed to make it into effect in two states since 2000. Only once in 2006 during the Arizona gubernatorial race have both candidates run this. There have been no statewide elections in Maine where both candidate allowed this. It was overwhelmingly defeated as a ballot initiative in Alaska in August of 2008.

And even in the two states where it passed voters – Massachusetts in 1998 and California in 2008 – the voters would reject it in subsequent measures when they ran up the question as how these campaigns would be paid for. In both cases the voters of two of the most liberal states in the nation made it clear that they didn't to publicly finance the campaigns of elected officials.

Like Rauch I'm in agreement that keeping money out of politics is impossible and the ideas of those who argue for it, no matter how well intentioned, are fundamentally naïve. Money has always been a part of politics just as it will always be a part of everything in America. One understands why one wants to keep special interests and corporations out of politics but ever since the Industrial revolution that's never been a reality in America or really any democracy. Everything has a price and that includes running for office. The Republicans accepted that reality years ago and that's something the far left more than any other part of our American discourse refuses to accept.

 

 

Reforming Congress, particularly in regard to seniority determined chairmanship.

Here Rauch argues when the post-Watergate class of Congressmen in the 1970s (he refers mostly to liberals but Newt Gingrich, who he says accelerated the process entered the House during the same period) destroyed the system of seniority and committee systems that 'rewarded teamwork and loyalty, that ensured people at the top were experienced, and harnessed hundreds of middle-ranking members of Congressmen to the task of legislating'. He points out that today Congress is 'a collection of individual entrepreneurs and pressure groups' and correctly points out that the balance of power is in the Freedom Caucus members 'who think nothing of wielding power against their own leaders'. One could argue that a similar mindset now is part of the Progressive caucus on the other side of the aisle.

I have a slightly different opinion than Rauch on this. While I agree that the reforms have led to the world of chaos in politics, mostly in the House but also the Senate, I've never been convinced that the idea of seniority – which even the author admits was closer to a fiefdom than meritocracy – was the best thing for reform as a whole. As anyone who knows the history of 20^th century politics by the era of the New Deal, the most senior chairs of committees were primarily the conservative southerners known then as the Dixiecrats. They raged against most of the New Deal programs and much of FDR's legislation and were the primary obstacle for any attempt to advance the idea of civil rights legislation until the combined efforts of LBJ and a coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans managed to overcome to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year. This may have rewarded the idea of party unity but it came at the cost of the basic rights to African-Americans for the first half of the twentieth century.

As for the work of Gingrich's revolutionaries who compounded all of this, I will simply state the only odd thing about is not that he decided to tear up the old order of Congress but that it took as long as it did for any Republican to do so. The more I look at the historic record of the 20^th century I wonder how much of the myth of 'the loyal opposition' comes from the liberal mindset of that era. As we know very well Republicans by and large hated the New Deal programs, had little use initially for international organizations and no respect for any part of the Great Society and all the reforms of the 1960s. But because throughout the overwhelming majority of the 20^th century the Democrats had such staggering numbers in both houses of Congress the Republicans more or less had to limit themselves to speeches on the floors of Congress against it. Opposition to the majority of these reforms always came far more from conservative Democrats and it was due to the leadership of strong Democratic Presidents from FDR to LBJ that they managed to get the reforms they wanted accomplished. The Republicans opposed all of these reforms at an institutional level but they were so popular with the public that they saw no benefit in campaigning against it. Minority leaders like Bob Michel may have believed conservativism could be preserved by working honestly with Democratic leaders. We know that throughout the 20^th century there were quite a few Republicans, from Karl Mundt and Charlie Halleck to William Jenner and Joseph McCarthy who were just as willing to tear the order down – and by and large the Republicans were fine with it for political means.

So while I agree that tearing the old order down led to the problems we face today, I'm not sure the old order was something to be celebrated. It's the consequence of something Sam Rayburn famously said: "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one." I agree the situation we face today is because of too many jackasses and precious few carpenters but that doesn't mean the barn didn't deserve to be kicked down.

 

 

Cameras in Congress, ending the possible of closed-door negotiations for legislation.

This argument is self-explanatory. Rauch says that because federal law, congressional rules and public expectations have places almost all formal deliberations and most informal ones in public view, finding space for delicate negotiations and candid deliberation can be difficult. Of all Rauch's arguments I agree with this one whole-heartedly and I doubt any sane person could argue the long term damage that has been done in the name of greater transparency.

This is where the strongest argument for the 'smoke-filled room' works for me. Congress, cable news networks and the media-industrial complex have taken away the idea of all meaningful legislation in the name of public theater. This was a problem well before Trump arrived on the scene as cable news did everything in its power to pick apart any major development in the name of a bigger story or one at all. Government when it works well, we forget, is supposed to be dull and boring. This has always been anathema to the media and particularly television which needs to make things exciting when they're not. And in my lifetime whether the Presidents were Democrat or Republican, whether the Congress were Democrat or Republican, everything became a real-time media event. Tom Daschle would point out "The idea that Washington would work better if there were TV cameras monitoring every conversation gets it exactly wrong."

He's correct. The only people it has ever worked better for are reporters, pundits and media analysts. And considering that there's more money to be made working as one of those then serving in elected office, its hardly shocking that years after elected officials on both sides have become far more well-known as fixtures on television in which they can explain the process in more detail while arguing why their former colleagues are saying what they're saying, making it harder for things to get done. Sunlight has hardly been a disinfectant in this case. On the contrary now everyone on Washington only comes out at night.

 

 

Reforming pork

This last one is one I would have confessed not being a problem before Rauch explained the reason why. As long as I've been alive the one universal truth from Democrats and Republicans was that pork was the worst thing possible and should be avoided at all costs. What I didn't know – but honestly should have picked up on during my intense reading on American history – was that it has been these very pork-barrel promises that got so much done.

I'm not sure how else FDR and colleagues for most of the 20^th century would have been able to get their legislation past conservative Democrats had they not been promising things for their districts, whether it was patronage, federal bases or something to bring jobs to the community. Rauch points out that LBJ couldn't have gotten the Civil Rights bill through without support from minority leader Charles Halleck whose price was a NASA research grant for his district.

But starting in the 1970s and increasingly snowballing when the Republicans took over, the process for appropriations broke down, due to reforms that weakened appropriations' power, sunshine laws that reduced their autonomy and the polarization that made negotiations possible. Ironically one of the last times extremists of both parties ever worked together was in 2011 when 'a strange-bedfellows coalition of Tea Partiers and progressives banned earmarking, the practice of dropping goodies into bills as a way to attract votes – including, ironically, votes for politically painful spending reductions.

And as a result Congressional leaders lost one of their last remaining tools to induce fellowship and team play. Trent Lott told CNN in 2013: "Trying to be a leader where you have no sticks and very few carrots is dang near impossible. Members don't get anything from you and leaders don't give anything. They don't fell like you can reward them or punish them."

 

So small wonder that in recent years so much of our government has fallen apart to the point that an entire generation of elected officials come to Congress not in the name of serving the public good or their party but to purely became celebrities on a national stage.

This has been rampant in the Republican Party, particularly in the House for the 21^st century. The equally troubling possibility is that the far left branch of the Democrats will catch up with their Freedom Caucus counterparts. The Justice Democrats came into existence in large part having grown up knowing only of this level of Congressional dysfunction and believing that being an effective representative meant playing by the rules that have been effect all their lives.

They have benefited it just as much Gingrich's Republican revolutionaries, the Tea Partiers and all of the Republicans who have come in age in the era of Trump have. They are purists in the same way that the Freedom Caucus is, care less for helping their party or their district then being known on a national stage and it has already proven difficult for leadership to control them. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries were mostly able to do so during Biden's administration but in the aftermath of last year, it may increasingly become difficult to. There are no carrots and almost no sticks.

And in many cases they have demonstrated that they care far more for the big picture than locally. In her first year in Congress Amazon was planning to locate a new corporate headquarters in Queens that would have provided financial growth and jobs for the people in New York. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then in Congress les than a month, joined with her fellow progressives to argue the money Amazon would invest should be invested in public services, that the tax breaks would lead to the richest people, and would exacerbate gentrification in Queens – which is not even part of New York that she represents. This opposition led to Amazon cancelling its plan for the New York campus.

When she learned that she had stopped the possibility of 2500 new jobs AOC said that she had a more concrete plan to help New York. But Ocasio-Cortez has in fact spent precious little time in New York during her six years in Congress. Her most famous return was when she attended the Met Gala in 2021 wearing an organza gown that said, 'Tax The Rich' . She has spent a fair amount of time speaking out on college campuses about progressive issues, appearing on CNN and amassing a huge amount of followers on social media. In the minds of many young Americans, this is what a great representative should be and what a reformer should look like. They only think this way I'd say because of the chaos that has been caused by so many previous reforms.

I mention this because everything that applied to AOC and 'The Squad' could just as easily apply to so many of the Republicans that Rauch mentions with disdain in his essay. They could only have come into existence because of those reforms and are as potentially destructive to the Democratic leadership as Gingrich was when he came to power in the 1990s. And they have no use for the reforms that allowed them to come to power in the first place, believing in an age of political individualism and with little use for the institutions that are already frail.

The reason I mention this is because, in those same left-wing newsletters I have received arguing what is wrong with American politics, they frequently held up the Squad and fellow leftist politicians as the solution to the problems. Not for them is trying to fix a system that is broken, best to tear it down completely and start over. That they have no idea of what that world would look like is unsettling in a way the far right just isn't. Because they do have an idea and they've spent a lot of time trying to realize it.

Rauch's article didn't have a solution for today's problems but that's actually not an argument against it. As I said he wrote this before Trump's surprise win in 2016 so he might have assumed like so many it was a problem for the Democrats to deal with. As I said, unlike my more alarmist colleagues I believe we are approaching a post-Trump America and we're going to have to try and figure out how to fix things going forward. It's only by admitting our mistakes – and more importantly, why we might have supported them initially – that we may be able to find a way to build a healthier democracy and government so we can figure out how history does not repeat itself.