Stuff that I Have Noticed #41: The Arc of the Political Pendulum

CAVEAT: I am neither a political scientist nor an historian. I am a man who has been first noticing, second watching and finally (sort of) obsessing about politics. The opinions and data herein expressed are my own and are based on (perhaps faulty) observation and memory thereof along with a few statistics.

The arc of the political pendulum has been growing larger and larger since I cast my first vote for president in 1956. I voted for Ike. I liked Ike which is about all I knew about politics at that stage of my life. Now I’m gonna make a statement that may shock you –
retrospectively it even shocks me – but there was a reason at the time.

In 1960 I voted for Nixon.

Wait, wait, wait.

A year before that election I’d graduated from Whittier College of which Dick was not only a fellow graduate but both a fellow football player and a founding member of the society, The Orthogonians (jock society), of which I was a member. And I knew very little about politics or even about the trickster himself but he was a fellow Whittier man and an “O”, so naturally he got my vote.

Nixon at WC

How many people do you know who would admit that they voted for that turkey? But I digress.

A lot happened in our body politic between 1960 and ’64. One of those things is that I and many of my generation began to pay more attention to national policies and politics in general. My first vote for a Democrat was for LBJ that year. Since then I’ve voted for only one Republican, New York’s liberal senator Jacob Javits who was running against a corrupt Democrat. (Yes, there was a time when liberal Republicans existed.)

In the decades preceding the Newt infestation (He became Speaker in 1995.) the US Congress actually passed laws that made life better for the citizenry. I voted in all the elections from ’56 onward and looking back it feels like the policy pendulum didn’t swing very far after each one. The Senate remained the world class debating society it was designed to be, compromise and respect abounded and reasonable legislation was passed. Roads were built. NASA took humans into space and out to the moon. Civil rights were codified. Stuff got done!

In 1976 a kind and decent peanut farmer became POTUS. Jimmy did the best he could but in retrospect he was undervalued and in 1980 he was ousted by a B list “actor”.

And even during Ronnie and Nancy’s reign the congress still functioned, bills did get passed, no fist fights broke out in the capitol but the polarization began to creep in. Bush senior didn’t exacerbate things much but the arc of the pendulum did grow a tad more wide. Newt was not yet speaker but he did lend weight to the swing.

In 1992 the fecal matter entered the air conditioner! The Repubs loathed Bill and did all they could to stall him in his tracks. But he and his estimable life partner were a powerful and determined team and managed to get some worthwhile things done. In my opinion one of their most important – yet short lived – achievements was the assault weapons ban. It included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of (some but not all) semi-automatic firearms defined as assault weapons and ammunition magazines that were defined as “large capacity.” The ten-year ban was passed by the Congress in September 1994, with a 52–48 vote in the Senate, and was signed into law by Clinton on the same day. The obvious flaw was the ten-year life of the law. But mass killings decreased substantially and (Surprise!) rose again a decade later.

Two years after Clinton was inaugurated Newt became speaker and gave the pendulum a series of shoves. Gingrich’s speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and the health of our democracy. He instilled a combative approach in the Republican party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called us corrupt, compared us to fascists, and accused us of wanting to destroy the United States.

The pendulum went crazy.

What’s to say about the Dubya/Darth Vader (aka Cheney) years? Wars, lies, corruption abounded and the pendulum kept swinging yet wider.

Then along came a sane, brilliant, bi-racial and reasonable man who began repairing the damage Bush, Jr. and his empowerers had wrought. It took almost both of Obama’s terms to right the ship of state – as much as it could be righted with the Turtle struggling to capsize the congress – but many of the wrongs were successfully addressed. And don’t forget the ACA!

Then the pendulum almost did a 360!

Books have been, and many more will be, written about the international disaster that was the mis-administration of He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named and there’s no need for me to explicate here. There were 215 criminal investigations of his minions, shattering even the record of Nixon. (Only 68 people were indicted and 58 were convicted in the Watergate scandal or related investigations. Clinton’s people had 2 indictments, Carter and Obama, zero.) So H-W-W-N-B-N was indeed number one in many ways.

Deep Breath…

With the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the Presidential portion of the political pendulum once again is returning to a normal swing. Much depends on what happens with this and the next congress but at least we now have an administration with competent, respected, dedicated and experienced professionals driving the bus.

Resume Normal Breathing and Swinging.

PS: A relevant article in The Atlantic

My books are here.