If Republicans take control of one or both chambers of Congress in 2011, Washington is headed for "a very, very rough couple of years," predicted Norman Ornstein, one of the nation's leading congressional scholars and commentators, at the Humphrey Institute Monday.
American politics has devolved into a partisan team sport that makes bipartisan lawmaking almost impossible, Ornstein reported as he kicked off a one-day conference on the decennial redrawing of congressional and legislative district boundaries called redistricting. That work is among the obligations of the 2011 Legislature.
The drawing of too many districts dominated by one party in redistricting's last several iterations is one of several factors that have contributed to bipartisanship's demise in Congress, he said. There's more: the demonizing of the opposition as "the enemy," the challenging of the legitimacy of the other party's elected officials, the purging from party ranks of elected officials who cooperate with the other side. So much purging has already happened this year in primary elections around the country that members of Congress have been put on notice that "working cross party lines is like signing a political death sentence," Ornstein said.
I still meet Minnesota voters who think there's virtue in divided government, the executive branch in one party's hands, the legislative in another. That situation compels compromise and forges more reasonable policies, they believe. In the face of recent experience at both the federal and state levels, that thinking must be considered a faith-based notion.
