When the Republicans took over the House of Representatives 12 years ago, they unseated a Democratic leadership that had been in power for 40 years. Resentment among those who now found themselves in charge was rife. The Democrats had indeed been arrogant and self-satisfied in the way they ran the House. Cooperation with the minority party was better than it is now, but the distribution of the resources available and the procedures adopted because the majority could left the Republicans severely disadvantaged.
The Republicans of Gingrich's new 104th Congress promised not to do to the Democrats what had been done to them. In recent years, however, the House of Hastert has done everything it could to make the minority party powerless, even to the point of not including Democrats in Conference committees to negotiate differences in legislation with the Senate.
The House of Nancy Pelosi has an opportunity to foster cooperation between Democrats and Republicans that their Republican predecessors abandoned. With growing opposition among Republicans to the policies favored by the President and what appears to a growing group of conservative and moderate Democrats, it would seem to be to everyone's advantage to blur the ideological divisions that have poisoned the atmosphere in Congress and made it markedly less effective than it might have been.
The problems this country are severe enough, the choices we need to make unpleasant enough, that cooperation across party lines will be essential if we are to resolve them without forcing or facing crises. Watch, then, how the Pelosi House deals with the people on the other side of the aisle. Revenge would be bitter; better would it be to turn the other cheek.
No comments:
Post a Comment