RIDGELAND — John Boehner’s departure as the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives portends more gridlock and possibly future government shutdowns for our national government.
While Boehner will not go down in history as one of the great speakers of the U.S. House, his departure may be remembered as the end of any semblance of orderly government. Boehner, for all his shortcomings, did at least attempt to avert government shutdowns. He also realized that compromise with the other side was crucial in government.
Boehner continually faced members of the tea party intent upon sending the Republican Party ever further to the right. The term RINO (Republican in Name Only) is tossed freely at anyone who does not follow the tea party line, no matter how ridiculous the line. One suspects that the extreme right of today’s Republican Party would dismiss the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan as RINOs.
To be sure, Boehner’s own transgressions should not be overlooked. He has never been a particularly insightful nor gifted legislator. In fact, despite his condemnation of Ted Cruz and other belligerent House members, Boehner himself was neither above showmanship nor pandering to popular prejudices. How many meaningless votes were called to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even though he and other House leaders knew the effort was futile? Such actions are reminiscent of the Southern politicians during the 1950s and ’60s who vowed to overturn Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 1954 and repeal both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While such actions were impossible, the promise to do so played well to the angry masses.
Sitting at home on a restful Saturday evening with a French brandy and a fine cigar, I find the spectacle of future government paralysis more intriguing than the football games played by Mississippi State and Ole Miss, respectively. My teachers at St. Joseph High School in Jackson and Mississippi State University always taught me that the art of democracy lies in compromise. Without the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Great Compromise and a compromise related to the manner in which the president of the United States is elected, the Founding Fathers may well have never developed our Constitution. It is frightening to think of certain members of today’s Congress at the Constitutional Convention. Picture James Madison and Alexander Hamilton being referred to as “American in Name Only.”
Ideological entrenchment without even the slightest inclination toward compromise brings about more than gridlock and the looming specter of continued government shutdowns. It may also lead to a more dictatorial government should the ideologues force their way into total power.
I do not look with any real optimism to the coming presidential election. Neither party seems to present viable candidates. Harry Truman once pointed out that in the years before the Civil War, the republic had five very weak presidents. President Truman was correct. There were, however, men such as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in Congress who at least created a compromise that delayed the Civil War long enough so that when the war did come, the republic at last had a strong president who could lead victoriously against the Southern rebellion. Sadly, there are few giants in the Congress today, a fact that will be all the more apparent in the coming months.
• Vincent Venturini, of Ridgeland, is a professor of social work at Mississippi Valley State University.
