The incentives against bipartisanship are huge and getting worse. Honestly most of the campaign finance “reforms” have made it much worse although they’re hardly the only issue. Transparency laws and better information ironically make it much harder to be bipartisan since the partisan base will know of it and try and stop it. If they can’t stop it they’ll primary figures. That happened to GOP about 10 years ago and is happening to Dems today.

While I agree with your point about majorities, now the shoe is on the other foot. I just disagree it has to be like that as it didn’t used to be like that. The polarization is relatively recent – largely started in the 90’s.

The problem with weak states seems different and has much more to do with people not participating in local government.

I also don’t have issues with executive orders in general. They’re a necessary part of running the country. For the same reason, I don’t think it was a bad thing for the Democrats to make a bare Senate majority sufficient for cabinet picks. Presidents should be able to run the government with the cabinet secretaries they choose. The filibuster is antidemocratic, whoever is in office.

So, basically, no, I’m not in favor of federalism or a weak executive. I’ve lived in some highly dysfunctional states where federalism would have disastrous consequences, and the challenges facing the U.S. and the world are things that require strong national action (by sane and capable leaders), rather than endless deliberation by 50 squabbling states.

My other point is simply that if you expand what the President can do independent of the legislative branch don’t be surprised when a President you don’t like uses those power. The problem I have is that the process of government – especially checks and balances – too often have been disparaged by liberals who only were concerned with their desired outcomes. Now we are reaping what we sowed. But don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of blame to go to the GOP on this including Bush’s expansions of executive authority (which Obama condemned right up to the point he found he could use them to get what he wanted).

What I hope is that liberals are finally starting to see the benefits of federalism.

It seems eminently reasonable to me for governmental agencies to promulgate rules in line with the law to implement it. It’s true that executives faced with balky legislatures are liable to reach for more than the judiciary may ultimately allow. I’m not convinced that we can blame Trump on the Roosevelts any more than we can blame him on Obama, though. I could very much use another Roosevelt right now, or a couple more Obamas.

This distinction between what a few conservatives wanted versus what the party or base wanted was particularly true in 2008. McCain (who also favored a somewhat similar medical insurance expansion) was in many ways out of the mainstream of the GOP which had become far more populist than in the 80’s and 90’s. The reality was even if GOP members and worked with Obama more, among the base there was widespread opposition to the ACA. Now I think the GOP made the mistake of milking this for political aims. I still fume at the GOP running against the ACA with fearmongering on ‘death panels.’ The GOP of the prior decade would have been fine with limiting spending on medicare and allowing people private insurance on top of medicare. But it was convenient for short term gain (and of course their base was overwhelmingly older). Intellectually though I knew it was the beginning of the end for the GOP. I think we can trace a direct line from such expediency to Trump.

To say that Obama’s actions weren’t overreach seems grasping, especially since several were overturned by the courts. I say that as someone who was very critical of the expansion of executive powers under Bush as well. The reality is though that much of the expansion of the executive branch has come by the conscious decisions of the legislative branch to avoid their responsibilities. They do this by passing laws (including both the ACA and Obama’s finance regulation reforms) where much of the law is ‘written’ by regulators after the law is passed allowing legislators to pass the buck of responsibility.

The reason many of us are intellectually committed to limits on executive authority is because we saw what happened in the 19th century and during the early Progressive era (roughly the two Roosevelts) Someone like Trump was inevitable and he’ll use the precedence to run roughshod over our government. There’s a compelling reason to put most authority in the legislative and judicial branches and have strong states with most legislation done there rather than nationally. I hope liberals are seeing why that’s a good idea now that Trump is active.

On executive orders, it is important to take into consideration the nature of the orders themselves; however, numbers give us some indication of executive action. The point was that the executive branch has become more active since Lincoln, largely because of the Civil War. The executive continued to expand its role since, largely in part because of the personality of the Age of Progressivism, WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, and the US’s ever-expanding role in world politics and the global economy since WWII. Plus, I was responding to a comment about overreach. The idea that Obama’s executive orders, on immigration and other matters, were overreach is completely ridiculous, especially considering the fact that Obama was dealing with a deadlocked Congress and an obstructionist opposition party that was held hostage by a highly reactionary bloc within. The executive branch has to execute, right? It can’t have its hands tied indefinitely. Besides the question in my post and the OP is not over the legality of the actions of the president (both Obama’s and Trump’s EOs are legal) but the morality. And where Obama was on the right side of morality by issuing an executive order to defer the deportation of parents whose children were US citizens, Trump is on the wrong side of morality by basically attempting a first step on banning Muslims from the US. Obama’s “overreach” did not pave the way for Trump’s immoral actions. A reactionary minority plus a fluke election victory did.

Dan (16), it’s important to note that all parties have coalitions. Just because one part of the coalition favored a plan (say Heritage on medical reform in the early 90’s) doesn’t mean the rest of it does. Raising ACA relative to Romney or Heritage is thus more than a little misleading. A bit akin to saying Bernie favored immigration restrictions so all liberals do.

I’d add too that the issue isn’t the number of EO but the nature of the orders. So absolute numbers doesn’t tell us much. A bigger problem though is that some of the EO made by Obama on immigration set case law that Trump can now take advantage of. This means that legally those who oppose Trump’s actions may have a much harder time overturning them. I should add that many conservative intellectuals were warning of this at the time – well before the reality of Trump was even a fever dream nightmare let alone reality.

Jonathan (13) The “but Obama” charges of hypocrisy, even if often true (especially by how the press covered him) don’t tend to achieve much.The reality is that nearly all partisans are hypocritical and that news is what people think is unusual – a problem when nearly all mainstream reporters have similar secular center left views. (Not much intellectual diversity)

However Republicans if they were truly about values and ideas wouldn’t be justifying things on the basis of Obama doing them if they thought them wrong. What’s massively discouraging about the lack of spine in the GOP the last year where things they’d been condemning as evil suddenly were excused.

A false equivalence of massive proportions. Not even remotely true.

P. L., it’s true but banal to say that Trump could only be elected because of Obama. After two terms of one party in office, it’s very difficult to win a third. It’s mostly false to say that Trump is merely the continuation of Obama’s presidency. Again, you’ve got be be smarter than that. It’s easy to point to examples of their policies that are completely opposite. The really interesting cases, the ones that bear thinking about, are the exceptions where their policies are actually congruent. But you have to get better about identifying and describing them.

Bush created DHS, Obama politicized it, Trump weaponized it. The cycle will continue until you can recognize what Obama rarely acknowledged — we are a nation of laws not men.

There’s no way; none, that Trump is elected without Obama’s Presidency. It’s important to consider the cause when evaluating the course for the future. Those who can’t see this of course will continue to post outrage after outrage, but you won’t find peace or any effectual changes.

We’ve broken our system of government by demanding to be ruled by men, not laws. Even the judges make this mistake often enough.

Also, citing Obamacare as an example of Obama’s malfeasance undermines your persuasiveness. The law was passed by both houses of congress, survived multiple rounds of judicial review, and extended health insurance to many millions of Americans. If your big issue is opposing a health insurance plan based on Romney’s state plan in Massachusetts, I begin to suspect that you are completely bonkers.

Anon, if it’s only the liberals who have a rough four years, we will all be very fortunate.

N. Whilk, it’s still a career-ender today for people if it becomes known that they were informants for the East German Stasi. If I understand your comment correctly, you see informing DHS that the people next door are undocumented immigrants as more like an upstanding citizen calling the police to report a car being stolen (and let me know if I haven’t understood your comment). I suspect that tipping off DHS that your ward mission leader is an undocumented immigrant will be seen more like the actions of a Stasi informant than those of an upstanding citizen. Maybe I’m wrong, but I know which one I’ll choose.