Divided Government Holds Warmongering in Check

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Divided government holds spending, warmongering in check

By Steve Chapman

Originally published February 3, 2004

CHICAGO - Back in the mid-1960s, the nation was mired in a war with no end in sight, our leaders were creating entitlements with reckless abandon and critics were accusing the president of deceiving the public.

Today, the Army says it may keep troops in Iraq through 2006, the price of the new Medicare drug benefit is already soaring and the administration is trying to explain all the things it said about Saddam Hussein that weren't true.

It's no accident that the era of Lyndon Johnson, a liberal Democrat, parallels that of George W. Bush, a conservative Republican. The two men have one crucial thing in common: presiding over a government controlled by one party.

LBJ was able to push through his legislative program, enjoy a free hand in Southeast Asia and get away with misleading the public about the war because Republicans provided only a puny counterbalance. Besides occupying the White House and holding a majority in both houses of Congress, Democrats had the upper hand on the Supreme Court.

Now it's the Democrats who are shut out of power in all three branches, leaving the GOP with an open field.

United government calls to mind the old axiom that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Both parties have their flaws and excesses. But divide power between them, and those shortcomings shrink. One-party dominance usually means too much of a bad thing. That's what we're getting today.

The pattern represents a sharp reversal from the recent past. During the Clinton years, the United States stayed out of major wars, the federal budget went from big deficits to big surpluses and the most notable presidential deceptions were about matters that didn't involve life and death. This is not because Bill Clinton was innately conservative and cautious. It's because for most of his time in office, Republicans controlled Congress.

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