Hyperpartisanship, Why "Bickering" is Good, and a Memorable Former Lawmaker

by Karl Kurtz

Many of our writers for The Thicket have been traveling or otherwise occupied this week, which accounts for our relatively low number of postings.  That doesn't mean we have stopped reading, though.  Here are three interesting articles from this week for legislative junkies:

• A New York Times book review of Ronald Brownstein's new book, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America. I must say that I hate the current fad of long descriptive subtitles like this one that are designed to shock and sell, but in this instance it seems to capture the book fairly well.  Michiko Kakutami, the reviewer, praises the book for its historical perspective comparing the "hyperpartisanship" of the Clinton and Bush administrations to the "age of bargaining" of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson eras.  Not having read the book, I wonder, as I always do on the subject of partisanship, what a longer-term historical perspective on the intense partisanship of the 19th century would tell us about the current period.  Many of today's hallmarks of partisanship--extreme rhetoric, strong party loyalty within the Congress, homogenization within the parties, and partisan media--were present in 19th century politics.  Unfortunately, I'm not a good enough historian of that period to reach any conclusions about this.
• Another of the Center on Congress at Indiana University's commentaries by its director, Lee Hamilton.  This one is on how "Debate is Good for Our System," explaining that the legislative disagreement and deliberation that the public sees as "bickering" is essential to decision-making in a democracy.  As usual, whenever I read one of Lee's commentaries, I wish I had written it myself.
• A New York Times obituary for former Arkansas Rep. Ray Smith, who died last week at age 83.  He served in the Arkansas House from 1955 to 1982, including one term as speaker (in a chamber where the speakership has been rotated every two years for a very long time).  The obituaries all focus on his lone vote against giving Gov. Orval Faubus the power to close any public schools that were forced to integrate.  But I remember him as a principal, on behalf of the Council of State Governments (of which he was the national chair at some point), in the negotiations in the mid-1970s over the merger that created the National Conference of State Legislatures and his subsequent service on the NCSL Executive Committee.  Ray loved to play the role of the southern country lawyer--and was just as sharp as that term implies.  I learned a lot from Ray, often over a class of whiskey.

Comments

[Karl Kurtz]

The next to last sentence of the Ray Smith portion of this post originally read: "Ray loved to play the role of the southern country lawyer, but he was as sharp as they come." Then I received a comment from a southern legislative staffer who wishes to remain anonymous: "There is a problem with this sentence--the word 'but.' No one in a southern legislature would ever have thought of using 'but'. In fact, the entire part of the sentence beginning with 'but' is sort of redundant as related to country lawyers who serve in the legislature in the South." This northern commentator stands corrected: I changed the post.