This November’s presidential election will be one of the most consequential in recent memory, and it has been granted added gravity following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s sudden exit from the race. But in order to reverse the failures of the Biden administration and end the chaos at home and abroad, Americans should not forget about the vital role Congress must play – just as the Founding Fathers envisioned.
As unpopular as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been, even they can’t compete with just how much the American people dislike and distrust the United States Congress. A dismal 18.6 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing in the latest RealClearPolitics average, while 70.6 percent disapprove.
The biggest issues most Americans cite with the country’s chief legislative body are partisan gridlock, lack of civility, and polarization – even worse than that which exists in the public at large. And indeed, seemingly every major legislative deadline in recent years has devolved into a crisis, with threats of government shutdown occurring on an almost annual basis.
However, as inept as Congress has been, it still has a crucial role to play. The Framers of the Constitution intended for the legislature, not the executive, to be the most powerful branch of the federal government. Rather than vesting the power to decide policy in one man, the Founders hoped that deliberation and compromise in Congress would produce better laws.
In practice, deliberation and compromise have been the exception rather than the norm – and this has directly contributed to the divided state the country now finds itself in today.
Some scholars will point to the 1950s through the 1970s as a “golden era” for Congress, when partisan gridlock was a far rarer phenomenon. Indeed, Congress did pass more legislation and functioned more smoothly as a lawmaking body – but this should not be confused with bipartisanship, consensus, or even good lawmaking.
Instead, this era was marked by Democrat dominance of Congress. The liberal party, largely bolstered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, controlled the House from 1955 until 1995, and the Senate from 1955 to 1981.
With this control, Democrats steamrolled the interests of Republicans, realizing the fears of the Founding Fathers that the majority might use its power to silence the minority. They massively expanded the power of the federal government and encroached on individual liberties in the process.
The narrative popular in most political history courses today is that Republicans’ sweeping victories in the 1994 midterms behind Newt Gingrich ushered in an era of partisan division. But as Kevin Portteus, a professor of politics at Hillsdale College, stressed to me, “The facts in their fullness don’t support the theory that Republicans and conservatives are to blame for what has happened to Congress.”
Instead, Republicans’ sudden re-emergence as a legitimate threat to Democrat control of Congress was merely a reflection of decades of simmering resentment over Democrat efforts to erode the nation’s founding principles and ignore conservative interests.
One incident in 1984 in particular underscored how lopsided and dangerous Democrat power had become. Following an inconclusive and hotly contested election in Indiana’s 8th Congressional District, most evidence suggested the Republican candidate won. But Democrats, using their majority in the House, voted to recognize and seat the Democrat candidate anyway.
“The new generation of Republicans learned their lesson – not only that Democrats had no interest in working with them, but also that Democrats would do anything to hold on to power,” Portteus said. Once conservatives began to challenge Democrat power, the left began labeling them “radicals” – the beginnings of today’s claims that Republicans led by Trump are a “threat to democracy.”
Trump’s emergence on the political scene is similar to Gingrich’s in the sense that it exposed tensions that had been building for some time. As much as the left blames Trump for political divisions that exist in the country today, he simply gave voice to the forgotten men and women of the country who had been scorned by the political establishments in both parties for decades. Trump finally began talking about the things that mattered to them, from the opioid epidemic to unchecked illegal immigration and the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs.
“The fact that the American people themselves have become increasingly polarized not on trivial but on fundamental matters is reflected in the legislature and the political parties,” said Professor Portteus, who teaches the course “Congress: How It Worked and Why It Doesn’t.”
As he explained, sometimes there is no room for compromise when it comes to these fundamental matters. One historical example he pointed to was the issue of slavery that deeply divided the country in the 1850s.
At that time, conciliatory Northerners rejected slavery but were willing to tolerate it in the South to preserve the union. But as Abraham Lincoln wisely recognized and articulated in his famous Cooper Union speech, the desire of the pro-slavery politicians to “rule or ruin” had charted a disastrous course for the country.
The ideological centers of the dominant parties in Congress at that time – the Democrats and the Whigs – were committed to upholding the institution of slavery to preserve “unity.” But despite this “consensus,” the American people were galvanizing against slavery, even if it meant open conflict.
Ultimately, a series of events led to the collapse of the Whigs and the emergence of a new political party – the Republican Party – founded on explicitly anti-slavery principles. On an issue like slavery, there was never any middle ground, as much as conciliatory politicians attempted to create one.
President Lincoln’s election was the final domino to fall to convince the southern states to secede. But it was developments in Congress, including the Kansas-Nebraska Act, that precipitated that break.
In our time, America faces fundamental questions about its own identity and place in the world. In the battle between the left’s “democratic-socialism” and the conservative America First vision advanced by Trump, middle ground is scarce.
If America is to make it through the turbulent times it finds itself in, Congress will as a matter of necessity play a vital role in building the future. As voters chart a new course for the country this fall, they should keep this in mind and advocate just as fiercely for change in Congress as they are for change in the White House.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.