Word: mayhew
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...necessarily so, and here's why: historically, there is actually little difference in the legislative productivity of Washington under divided government versus one-party rule. David Mayhew, a political science professor and congressional expert at Yale University (full disclosure: I took one of his courses several years ago) found that from 1947 to 1990, an average of 13 major laws were passed when one party controlled all the levers of power, compared to 12 when the President had to deal with either one or both houses of Congress being controlled by the opposition. (He counts all laws that were included...
...Mayhew argues, this pattern has held true since then - even as countless pundits have bemoaned how much more poisonously partisan our nation's politics has become. Two of the most productive legislative sessions over the last 16 years were in 1995-1996 - when a G.O.P.-controlled Congress and President Clinton passed 13 major laws, including a massive deregulation of the telecommunications industry and a welfare reform bill that drastically reshaped how the federal government and states supported low-income people - and 2001- 2002, when President Bush joined a Democrat-dominated Senate in authorizing two wars and passing the Patriot...
...major reasons that divided government can also be productive government, Mayhew notes, is that Congress doesn't just pass things in a vacuum. After 9/11, both parties felt a need to take steps to protect the country, leading to passage of the Patriot Act, creation of the Homeland Security Department and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also Presidents tend to overreach more when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government. Think of President Clinton's failed campaign to create universal health care in 1993 and President Bush's brief flirtation with radically restructuring Social Security...
...both houses of Congress? Certain kinds of legislation that the G.O.P. has passed over the last four years over Democratic opposition, such as tort reform and and limits to late-term abortions, probably wouldn't be put on the floor for votes if Democrats ran the House. And Mayhew's research does show that hearings and investigations increase dramatically with divided government, as one party seeks to embarrass the executive branch of the other. So expect to see lots of subpoenas flying from the offices of Democrats Henry Waxman and John Conyers, who would head the Government Reform and Judiciary...
...Democrats win one house of Congress, this situation won't be that unusual. The title of Mayhew's book on this subject is Divided We Govern and that's become increasingly true. Twenty out of the last 30 years, the government has been divided. The conventional wisdom has always been that voters actually prefer having the wheels of power paralyzed so that politicians can't do anything too stupid. But maybe it's quite the opposite, and voters know exactly what they are doing...