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Dwight Eisenhower's Final Message to Today's Politicians
Tweet Share on Facebook June 29, 2010 Comment (6)President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address is famous for its warning about the dangers of the growth of the “military-industrial complex." It was delivered on national television in January 1961; rereading it, the address is jarring in ways that have little to do with its signature phrase. Eisenhower's opening passage offered his gratitude to the national television and radio networks for giving him this opportunity to address the country.
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Voter's Anti-Incumbent Anger is Misguided
Tweet Share on Facebook June 18, 2010 Comment (34)By Matthew Dallek, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's a tough time to be an incumbent with a long legislative record in the Congress. Opponents in party primaries castigate incumbents as corrupt insiders, who, it's said, are responsible for every problem from the Great Recession to the BP oil spill to the inability to stop illegal immigration into this country.
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Partisan Squabbles as Necessary as Bipartisanship
Tweet Share on Facebook June 15, 2010 Comment (1)By Matthew Dallek, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There’s a good article in Roll Call today about tomorrow’s conference, “Breaking the Stalemate: Renewing a Bipartisan Dialogue,” at the National Archives Building. Cosponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center (where I’m a visiting scholar), the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress, and the U.S. National Archives, the event highlights an important point that’s often lost in the debate about bipartisanship.
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Media Hypes Partisanship and Tea Party, Misses the Real Story
Tweet Share on Facebook June 9, 2010 Comment (2)By Matthew Dallek, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Partisanship is spinning out of control, while the United States has become paralyzed and unable to tackle its most urgent challenges. That’s one of the most commonly uttered refrains of recent years, and it will be heard in the days following Tuesday's primary results. As with so much of what passes for conventional wisdom, however, this refrain is overdrawn and oversimplified.
Northwestern political scientist Laurel Harbridge shows in her research how partisan debates in Congress don't amount to the full story; in fact, bipartisan cosponsorship of committee-level legislation has remained “relatively constant” in recent decades. She has written that Congress still produces "a great deal of bipartisan legislation" at the committee stage (via co-sponsorship).
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Why Americans Should Love the Government They Hate
Tweet Share on Facebook June 1, 2010 Comment (20)By Matthew Dallek, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Federal government employees have endured harsh attacks from across the political spectrum in recent months. But the federal employees I know--lawyers, policymakers, and congressional staffers--are serious, dedicated and hard-working people who log much more than the 40 hours a week they're expected to work. And while it's true that they tend to receive good salaries and benefits, most of them could be earning a substantially larger salary if they decided to find work in the private sector.
I asked Julie Anderson, my colleague at the Bipartisan Policy Center, for her thoughts about why federal employees have received such a bad reputation as incompetent bureaucrats. Anderson has worked in all three branches of government. She is now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center leading a project looking at ways to strengthen American democracy, and her government positions include jobs she held at the Environmental Protection Agency and as a special assistant for legislative affairs in the Clinton White House.
She describes a core contradiction within America’s political culture. Americans dislike the federal government on a macro level, and Washington has become a potent catch-all symbol of whatever happens to the country that isn't positive. Yet, Anderson astutely points out that most Americans don't want to abolish the government services on which they rely. Few Americans are clamoring for an end to Medicare and Social Security, for instance. Police, firefighters, and public libraries and public transportation provide crucial government-run services to families in communities nationwide.
