OPINION:
If any good comes out of the current impeachment imbroglio, it will be that the Congress will not do very much in the next month or so while some members tie the Senate down trying to get rid of a president who is already gone.
That is good news to conservatives who believe that the less government does, the better off we all are. The people who bemoan do-nothing legislative sessions and gridlock are usually liberals and progressives who want the government’s stamp on just about every facet of American life. It is fashionable among that crowd to curse the Founding Fathers who created a system that frustrates their efforts to do what they consider to be good works using more and more of taxpayer’s money and money artificially created.
In other words, gridlock is good. Every time Congress wants something badly and quickly, it gets it badly. Let me cite a perfect example from my own experience. As a young Marine Corps officer, I picked up some beer money writing for professional military publications such as the Marine Corps Gazette and the Naval Institute Proceedings. These honoraria were established to provide incentives for professional thought.
Along came Jim Wright. For those who do not remember him, he was the Speaker of the House in the late 1980s who was forced to resign when it was found that he was peddling bulk copies of a book he had written that exceeded the ethics limitation on speaking fees. An embarrassed Congress immediately passed legislation prohibiting federal employees from being compensated for professional writing. There was — of course — one exception; that being members of the legislative branch.
I will give Congress a pass on the first COVID-19 stimulus last spring. We were all frightened and the economy appeared to be in a nosedive. Everyone got stimulus checks whether they needed them or not. However, there was no excuse for the last effort. There was plenty of time to reasonably determine who really needed the money. Those persons rendered long-term unemployed by the virus could have received some real help. Instead, people like me who did not want it or need it got the same pittance as everyone else.
I shook my head and banked the money against the day that the government finally gets around to taxing it — probably with interest. In other words, the kind of government that the Founders envisioned will likely continue to function as planned for the immediate future. Nothing radical will get done, and that is as it should be.
Mr. Biden’s failure to rein in his party’s congressional leaders is interesting, and frankly delightful. A new president usually has 100 days to show his chops. By concentrating on the impeachment, his party is squandering his chance to build bipartisan support with an agenda so far to the left that few Republicans and moderate Democrats will even consider supporting.
It is hard to believe that a president whose stated aim in the inaugural was building unity thinks that the impeachment farce will do anything but further divide the nation. There is only so much a president can do with executive orders. This means that real congressional action on universal health care, climate change, abolishing student debt and radical immigration reform are likely dead in the water.
It could not happen to a nicer agenda. The chance to be the real leader of his party is slipping through Mr. Biden’s fingers. If you do not lead your party, there are a lot of people standing in line to do it for you.
The radically progressive wing of the Democratic Party will begin agitating for more action while moderate Democratic legislators will fear the job losses that climate change activism is almost certain to create. Mr. Trump will terrify the moderate conservatives among the Republicans with threats of a MAGA-leaning third party if key tenets of his agenda are abandoned. This is a sure recipe for blessed congressional inaction.
Pet owners tend to keep kittens out of mischief by dangling bright shining objects in front of them. With impeachment, the Democrats are mesmerizing themselves; but it will still have the effect of distracting them from real mischief, at least for a while. Then, there will be other distractions. Given the politics of personal destruction on both sides of the aisle, we may well see inaction that would do the Founders proud. A few scandals here and there mixed with other crises … and before we know it — it’s 2022.
• Gary Anderson lectures on alternative analysis at the graduate level.
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