Beware one-party rule

On Saturday I received the following from one of my doctors:

After the backlash from Watergate came Carter and the Democrats controlling all of Washington. You can read below what Reagan said about that after he was elected. Because people fail to learn from their mistakes and because they fail to learn from history, history is bound to repeat itself.

In the 4 years before we got to Washington, they had it all. They had the whole enchilada. They controlled the Presidency, the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, all the committees of Congress, and the executive branch and hundreds of agencies and departments. They virtually had a free hand, and all they could think to do with that free hand was stick it in your pocket.

-- President Ronald Reagan, remarks at a Nevada Republican Party Rally, Las Vegas Convention Center, October 28, 1982.

Truthfully, I think it dangerous when any party has absolute power. After all, we are a nation of checks and balances.

DrTaras

On January 12, 2009, Armstrong Williams warned Beware one-party rule:

When Congress objects to an action (or inaction) by the executive, it can pass a law or withhold or increase an appropriation; the president can veto a bill passed by the Congress; Congress can with a two-thirds vote override the President's veto; the Supreme Court can hold a law passed by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional; Congress can pass and the president can sign a new law overriding the court's decision; and so on and so forth. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that, in recent times at least, the legislative and executive branches both fare better when they are in different party hands and thus freer to pursue their institutional constitutional aims. Put another way, when he becomes president, Barack Obama may yet quietly celebrate the failure to attain a filibuster-free 60-vote Senate. Indeed, at some point, he may long for the divided government that saved Bill Clinton's presidency and could have greatly benefited his successors.

And, later in the article:

It is sometimes said that at the end of the day, the two national parties are not the Republican and Democrat, but rather the White House Party and the Congressional Party. As noted above, they were in fact supposed to compete as well as collaborate. But when they are controlled by the same party, the dynamics seem to bring out the worst in both - collaborating either to overspend or to paralyze.

I agree with both my doctor and Mr. Williams on this issue!