Embracing Gridlock

FOX News reports today:

After Midterm Elections, Congress Faces Likely Legislative Gridlock

Other sources similarly speculate that Democrats stripped of their majorities, or at least their supermajorities, will lock horns with incoming Republicans over tax cuts, stimulus programs, climate change, and every remaining pet project of the Obama administration. Republicans, lacking sufficient numbers to pass counter-legislation, may do little more than block Democrat efforts. How will either side get anything done?

But therein lies a great question: Is this a bad thing?

At a CATO Institute dinner on May 13, columnist George Will made a surprising point:

Gridlock is not an American problem, it is an American achievement! When James Madison and 54 other geniuses went to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they did not go there to design an efficient government. That idea would have horrified them. They wanted a safe government, to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms: three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajorities, and judicial review. And yet, I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protractedly that they did not eventually get. The world understands, a world most of whose people live under governments they wish were capable of gridlock, that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness.

To be clear, I support legislation to reduce federal intrusion in local governments and in the free market. Further expansion of federal power must be stopped, and Washington must return more control to states and individual citizens. I want to see this big-government juggernaut reversed.

But this has been one busy bully of an administration who has disregarded opposition and aggressively and speedily imposed a series of giant, unread, barely understood laws and is poised to stack the courts to complete their efforts. The Democrat freight train has used its speed to an unfair advantage, to implement fundamental change before anyone realizes it, and to enforce it before anyone can repeal or stop it.

President Obama makes a habit of claiming Republicans do nothing but say no. (Which is false - Democrat congressional leaders almost categorically refuse to entertain counter-proposals.) But is it such a bad thing to say no? No, we should not spend more money we don't have. No, we should not bail out that corporation. No, we should not take control of that industry. No, we should not overrule state governments. No, we should not consolidate more power in Washington.

An efficient government is tyrannical. A republic is inefficient by design. It resists rapid change, resists sweeping change: a constitution as an immutable framework for laws, 50 states as laboratories of democracy, where ideas can be tested locally before being considered nationally. Consider in contrast that the most efficient governments in history are characteristically the bloodiest.

The bane of the Obama administration has been the impediments of multicameral democracy. I thank God and the founders that they are there. Government should focus on the timeless over the timely, and we all need to renew our appreciation for checks and balances, that is, gridlock.