Ideologues are in Charge
Amid the cascade of tributes to the late Edward Kennedy, the most affecting came from his colleagues in the United States Senate, especially those who were often in conflict with America’s leading liberal.
From the Republicans the sentiments went beyond politeness or propriety. When John McCain, Orrin Hatch and others remembered Ted Kennedy on his passing, they spoke of him with deep affection and matchless respect.
Hatch is a Mormon from Utah and a social conservative. In the late 1980s, when Kennedy was caught in a self-destructive cycle of alcohol and philandering, Hatch disapproved of Kennedy’s behaviour and told him so.
They became friends and collaborators. But this didn’t prevent them from criticizing each other. Once, after excoriating Hatch for his position on a bill, a playful Kennedy approached his colleague, draped an arm over his shoulder and asked with an Irish grin: “Well, Orrin, how’d I do?”
Their differences were never personal. Senators could disagree in public because that was political. But they could fraternize in private because that was natural.
Such were the folkways of the Senate — and more generally, the tenor of politics — when Kennedy arrived in Washington in 1962. There was a great sense of collegiality across party lines. Politicians of different stripes got along. Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, tells The New York Times that there wasn’t the animosity that there is today. He notes that he and Ed Muskie, the esteemed Democrat from Maine, drove to work together.
That clubbiness, though, has largely disappeared. Politics has become polarized, and this has weakened the process. Once opponents rarely threatened to use the filibuster to oppose bills in the Senate; last year it was threatened dozens of times.
We are seeing the consequences of this rift in the debate over universal health care. Barack Obama had wanted a bipartisan bill, but that increasingly seems unlikely after a summer of name-calling and scare-mongering, in some ways showing America at its worst.
Without Ted Kennedy, advocates of universal health care have one fewer vote in the Senate. Democrats are looking for support among progressive Republicans such as Olympia Snowe of Maine. What is curious here is that in a party that once had a liberal wing she is one of the few remaining Republicans sympathetic to this kind of reform.
As it happens, Maine is the last state in New England to elect two Republican senators. New Hampshire has one left, Senator Judd Gregg. After his state went Democratic in the last presidential election, as it did in 2004, he accepted (then declined) an offer to join Obama’s cabinet.
In Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut — which once elected progressive Republicans — there are none left. Other northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania don’t elect Republican senators anymore either.
As there are few liberal Republicans left in the North, there are few conservative Democrats left in the South. In Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, for example, they have been unseated by rock-ribbed Republicans.
This isn’t to say there aren’t differences among Democrats or among Republicans; there are, and it is why both parties wonder about marshalling all the votes they need in Congress. But both major parties are no longer the shifting ideological coalitions they were in the 1960s. The divisions are now more between parties than within them.
Politics in Canada is nowhere near as ideological as in the United States, but there has been a loss of collegiality in Parliament in the last generation. The decline of civility has intensified over the last five years of minority government, forcing the parties to act more out of strategy than principle.
The level of personal distrust among MPs is high, particularly in committees, where the partisanship often renders them dysfunctional. It is one of the reasons thoughtful legislators like Liberal Mauril Belanger and Conservative Michael Chong worry about the erosion of parliamentary democracy.
As prime minister, Stephen Harper is relentlessly political. When Obama won big last year, he chose accommodation. When Harper won small last year, he chose confrontation.
Harper’s early attempt to end public financing for political parties was a disastrous mistake that unified the opposition and made Michael Ignatieff Liberal leader in a swift, bloodless succession. It may yet be the undoing of Stephen Harper, surely the most partisan prime minister since John Diefenbaker.
Maybe he’s learning, though. The appointment of Gary Doer as Ambassador to the United States is inspired; Doer is able, outspoken and a New Democrat. On the other hand, to believe the analysts and the politicos, the appointment is “cunning” and “opportunistic.”
If so, too bad. For a moment, it looked like we might be breaking a bad habit.
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