Our system doesn't act even when we agree. That's killing us.
WASHINGTON >> When friends of the United States abroad enumerate aspects of our politics they simply can't understand, I've found they often point to the inability of our democracy to deal comprehensively with the mass slaughter our permissive gun laws enable.
Every new outrage — including the recent incidents in Arkabutla, Miss., El Paso and at Michigan State University — is met with mass mourning, tears, prayers and anger. And legislative gridlock. What kind of country sits by while its people are mowed down by gunfire?
The answer, which extends to other issues, lies in a breakdown of our governing system's ability to reflect majority opinion. This dysfunction is rooted in the peculiarities of our party coalitions, our flawed system of representation, the power of veto groups, and the transformation of so many issues into showdowns involving metropolitan areas facing off against small towns and the countryside.
The last Congress showed that when issues escape these traps, bipartisan action is possible: infrastructure improvements, investments in technology, repair of our postal system, new help for veterans and, yes, a modest step forward on guns. All won enough Republican support to become law.
A key: Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress had a political interest in bringing forward bills that benefited red and blue states alike. Infrastructure is an instructive example. Former president Donald Trump spoke so often about rebuilding roads and bridges that his “infrastructure weeks” became a standing joke. But a majority of Republicans opposed spending the kind of money a major infrastructure bill required, preventing legislation from being taken up.
It should not have required Democratic control to give the significant minority of the GOP senators who favored action a chance to vote affirmatively for infrastructure. But it did, because of the relative power of veto groups: The Republican right has a lot more veto power than does the Democratic left.
The GOP right, on principle, wants to stop anything that appears to be a move in a progressive direction. This means that the party's ultras punish leaders who dare seek agreement with the other side. The left, by contrast, typically takes what it can get.
The modest gun bill passed last year is an example of how this process often works. The law expanded background checks for prospective gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21 and strengthened restrictions on gun ownership by people convicted of domestic abuse. It fell well short of what's needed, but that didn't stop advocates of a more robust bill from supporting a measure narrow enough to get the required Republican votes in the Senate.
The Senate filibuster, requiring 60 votes on most issues, enhances the power of a minority to veto majority opinion. After the 2012 slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Senate voted 54 to 46 in favor of an amendment on background checks crafted by Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) and Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA.), hardly a liberal duo. Those 54 senators, representing 63 percent of the population, were not enough to overcome an opposition speaking for just 37 percent of the nation. It's hard to find a starker example of how the Senate vastly overrepresents the attitudes of rural states.
Without all the veto points, we could make substantial progress on issues now deemed hopeless. Consider voting rights: A 2022 Gallup survey found that between 60 and 78 percent of Americans supported various ways to make voting easier, including early voting, automatic voter registration and sending absentee ballots to all eligible voters.
One measure favored by conservatives, requiring all voters to provide photo identification, also got overwhelming support, but two others — removing people from voter rolls if they did not vote over a five-year period and limiting drop boxes and other locations to cast ballots — were opposed by roughly 6 in 10 Americans.
A compromise bill might thus combine a nondiscriminatory identification requirement with efforts to ease ballot access. And guess what? That's the bargain Manchin struck with the 2021 “For the People Act.” It went down, 5050, in a partisan filibuster.