What Is This Grid, and Why Is It Locked?

Turn on your TV or radio, open a newspaper, click through the internet-news…you will be treated to a writhing Conga-line of reporters, media personalities and politicians wringing their hands in frustration while extolling the virtues of political compromise and concession, all the while accusing opponents of the latest cause-celebre of perpetrating Gridlock.

Here’s how it works according to the prophets of Gridlock… Party-A, whilst enjoying a slim partisan majority, combined with the enthusiastic support of the Executive, has an idea for legislation that they believe will propel our society to utopia…they hammer away at draft legislation to enshrine the vision.  Constant public back-slapping and self-congratulation are featured among the wise and sage proponents.  Mixed into the rhetoric are stern predictions of the apocalypse that will follow the bill’s defeat if opponents prevail.  Advance teams of Party A’s spokespeople are dispatched to speak of a country in which fairness and equality will pour forth like a Harlem fire hydrant on a hot summer day- but only if this brilliant piece of legislation becomes law.  Party-B, the antagonist without whose nominal acquiescence Party-A’s bold idea cannot become law, disagrees, withholds support, but offers alternatives that could lead to a compromise…Party-A then cries GRIDLOCK!

Hapless TV viewers nod their heads and lament the by-gone days where politicians agreed on everything and all laws were inspirational, aspirational, and dog gone it, just plain good (I don’t know when this actually happened, but the prophets of Gridlock often tell us of this bygone era).

Back to reality- isn’t this simply how the legislative branch of our representative system of government is supposed to work?  Minority opinions are not supposed to be marginalized and trampled.  When did the authors of our Constitution agree that as long as a one-party coalition of legislators and the Executive agreed, their ideas should automatically become law in lieu of minority objection?  John Adams referred to this as “tyranny of the majority” and warned against it.  Representative government is a good thing folks.  It is not perfect, but it has saved us from some pretty awful ideas.

Tension and resistance are purposely built into the system.  For example-  The US Senate was structured by the founding fathers with longer terms than for colleagues in the House of Representatives, a higher age threshold for those seeking office, and the responsibility of representing their entire State rather than a district within a State.  They even went so far as to mandate two Senators from each State, thus furthering the potential of a minority representative increment within a State.  The founders purposely built a system replete with tension and friction in order to ensure that the majority could not run roughshod over the minority.

Our nation’s founders recognized that absent this structural tension and the debate that it provokes, a passionate and motivated majority could propagate laws that would not only change the fundamental nature of society, but potentially obviate any future chance of reversing course.

One does not have to look farther than the current events in Egypt to see the results of an unrestrained frictionless government.  Witness Egypt’s recently overthrown run-away executive leadership headed by the former President Mohamed Morsi.  He and his Muslim Brotherhood organization co-opted the legislature, enforced a state run media, and structured a compliant judiciary…they were heading down the slippery slope toward tyranny.  The rigged majority Muslim Brotherhood government marginalized all opponents with new laws and a devised a custom built constitution that was nothing more than a thinly disguised mechanism for totalitarian rule.  For those who decry Gridlock when our politicians don’t agree, imagine our society if disagreement and debate were not possible.  How do you feel about the $1.55 B annual “aid” payment we make to the Egyptian military now?  They turned out to be the only e-brake on the Brotherhood’s run-away train to Sharia-Town when they acted autonomously from Morsi’s regime.

The current-events in Egypt are an example of a government where no dissent is brooked and  minority opinion is squashed…it is a good illustration of the perils of a system without Gridlock.

Gridlock is exposed as nothing more than a blunt political ploy…it is the rallying call for one-party rule.

Please try this the next time a pundit or politician uses the word Gridlock while claiming the moral and principle high-ground on his or her favorite issue.  Substitute the phrase “I’m pissed-off that I’m not getting my way even though there is substantial and thoughtful objection to my idea, and I wish opposition would just go away”.  Then thank the founders for engineering the Gridlock feature into our Constitution.