When Bipartisanship Worked

Best friends: Republican senator George Aiken (left) and Democratic senator Mike Mansfield
(U.S. Senate Historical Office)

By James H. Douglas

The following is adapted from a speech that former Vermont governor James H. Douglas delivered at the annual gala of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation in August 2014.

Plutarch tells how Numa, the Roman emperor, faced with internal dissension among the two races that made up his country, divided the populace according to their trades. Previously, the Sabines and the Romans stood apart, aloof from each other, engaging in endless quarrels and rivalries. Loyalties to race were displaced by loyalties to trade and profession, and the change of allegiance reduced the tensions and the waste of conflict.

In Federalist 10, James Madison identified the need “to break and control the violence of faction.” He prayed that the national legislature would not be burdened by those “inflamed…with mutual animosity,…rendered more disposed to vex and oppose each other than to co-operate for the common good.”

President George Washington warned against the establishment of political parties in his Farewell Address in 1796. It was in response to Thomas Jefferson’s creation of the Democratic-Republican Party, in opposition to the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton. Washington predicted that parties would engender a spirit of revenge, causing pain, suffering, and “despotism.”

A party, Washington believed, “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.” He explained, “It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” A political party might make sense, he conceded, in a country with a monarch. “But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.”

Of course, most nations have political parties these days, but I wonder how different a political system we might have if we had taken the advice of our first chief executive.

Calvin Coolidge got along pretty well with the Congress throughout his presidency. But during what he called the chambers’ “hours of timidity,” when the national legislature became “subservient to the importunities of organized minorities,” Coolidge became more assertive. The president acted, he said, as “the champion of the rights of the whole country.” He took a broader view of the nation’s needs.

Those endowed by the voters with responsibility have the obligation to actually accomplish something, a feat rendered more difficult when officeholders retreat to their partisan corners.

In 2012, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine announced that she would decline another term. She penned an op-ed explaining her decision:

For change to occur, our leaders must understand that there is not only strength in compromise, courage in conciliation and honor in consensus-building—but also a political reward for following these tenets. That reward will be real only if the people demonstrate their desire for politicians to come together after the planks in their respective party platforms do not prevail.

Polarization

Ralph Flanders was a senator from Vermont in the 1940s and ’50s. He wrote a book after leaving office called, appropriately, Senator from Vermont. Flanders believed that the strength of the two parties was their diversity. He enjoyed becoming acquainted with colleagues from different regions of the country with varying views on major issues of the day. Senators of that era were collegial and worked frequently across party lines. After all, it was Flanders who sponsored the resolution to censure his fellow Republican from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy.

Here’s how he saw things:

As to the difference between the two parties,…the difference is not great. It is not so great between the parties as it is within each party.… From all my 12 years’ service in the Senate I cannot recollect a single case of an important but controversial measure which could have been passed by a strictly party vote. The decisive vote for each was composed of yeas and nays from each side of the aisle.

Things have changed since he wrote this in 1961.

I blame the interstate highway for the decline in collegiality in state government.

Let me explain:

In the old days, when transportation was more challenging, legislators came to the state capital in Montpelier for the entire session and went back home after it was over. Subsequently, many of us arrived in the capital Tuesday morning before the gavel fell or perhaps Monday evening, to be more relaxed the following day or to avoid the possibility of a storm.

Now there are far more commuters; as the state’s population shifted to the northwest, a majority of legislators can conveniently return home each evening. As a result, lawmakers don’t dine with one another, don’t socialize as much, and don’t develop the personal relationships conducive to working well together on the issues of the day.

I always believed that, if you know you’ll be having dinner that evening with a solon of the other party, you might ease up a little on the rhetoric during the day.

Congress is now the same. Most members breeze into Washington Tuesday morning and fly home late Thursday. The need for perpetual fundraising and public appearances drives the schedule.

George Aiken represented Vermont in the U.S. Senate for more than thirty years. For his last election, in 1968, he reported campaign expenditures of $17.09—“mostly for postage to thank people for circulating his nominating petitions, which I didn’t ask them to do.” That wouldn’t happen today, even if a senator is unopposed.

For years, Senator Aiken had breakfast with Mike Mansfield, the Democratic senator from Montana and majority leader. They were the best of friends, regardless of how they voted. That kind of relationship is regrettably rare these days.

A troubling demographic trend is contributing to the growing grumpiness in American politics. It’s part of the national polarization that is not conducive to maintaining a civil, pluralistic society.

Some researchers presented a theory they call “ideological migration.” They posited that people increasingly want to live in communities with those who think the same way they do. As a result, some states are becoming a deeper shade of blue and others a more brilliant red. By 2024, only ten of the fifty states had divided government. In all the others, one party held the government ship and majorities in both the state senate and the state house. And poll after poll shows that the nation grows ever more divided ideologically.

Restrain Yourself

We may think that our age is the most unpleasant, but partisan attacks have been going on for some time.

President Calvin Coolidge had his detractors in the 1920s. H. L. Mencken lamented that a democracy, given 36 million adult white males from whom to choose, “including thousands who are handsome and many wise, [would] pick out the Honorable Mr. Coolidge to be head of state.” Mencken also said of Coolidge, “He will be ranked among the vacuums.”

Oswald Villard, editor of The Nation, called Coolidge a “midget statesman.”

Sinclair Lewis wrote The Man Who Knew Coolidge, a whole book mocking Coolidge and those who liked him. The president responded, “What is important is not what some writers represent us to be but what we really are.”

The lesson here is not to be thin-skinned. Coolidge declined to attack his adversaries. He learned this from his mentor, Senator Murray Crane of Massachusetts. Of him Coolidge said, “He confirmed my opinion as to the value of a silence which avoids creating a situation where one would otherwise not exist, and the bad taste and the danger of arousing animosities and advertising an opponent by making any attack on him.”

It’s not easy to restrain yourself in the face of harsh criticism, but Calvin Coolidge provides a glorious example.

Two Reforms We Need

What we really want, of course, is a government that works. Increasingly Americans are concluding that Washington is broken.

I was on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago. It was a scene that was surreal: lots of well-dressed people with briefcases, folders and smart phones walking briskly and purposefully through the corridors of power appearing to be rushing somewhere to do something really important. These are the same people, of course, who have been unable or unwilling even to pass budgets and who continue to create crises, solve them at the eleventh hour, and then expect us all to be grateful and relieved.

A host of reforms have been suggested, but I believe that only two would make a significant difference. The first is changing how congressional districts are drawn. Gerrymandering is the process of designing some of such a bizarre shape that it’s obviously an effort to create a constituency favorable to a particular party or candidate. It takes its name from Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts two centuries ago, who was in office when the state senate districts were drawn in an extremely contorted way.

Gerrymandering has contributed to the polarization of the country. Someone observed recently that we’re a 50-50 nation, but we have 90-10 districts. Very few seats in the United States House are competitive: they’re crafted by state legislators to favor the candidates of their party. If politicians draw the maps, the results will be political.

Some states have created independent bodies to design the districts. Better yet, there’s the Iowa system, where it’s done by a computer. A dispassionate, impartial, nonpartisan redistricting process would make a tremendous difference by eliminating all those safe seats. It would force candidates and, later, officeholders to the political center.

Second, I’ve long opposed term limits for public officials. I’ve bought into the oft-used argument that “we already have term limits: they’re called elections.” It’s a snappy line, but incumbents almost always win reelection if they seek it. Less politically motivated redistricting would help, but not in the U.S. Senate. Indeed, all officeholders have great advantages over their challengers: they can churn out press releases, deploy their large staffs, distribute federal grants that add to our huge debt, and attract far more campaign contributions because donors rightly assume that they’ll probably prevail. Those who spend money on candidates like to give to winners.

That’s a big part of why congressional races have become so uncompetitive. In the 2022 midterm elections, 84 percent of House races were decided by ten or more points, or were uncontested.

Rather than address the stasis in the federal government today, each side blames the other. In fact, of course, they’re both right. How can those who’ve been breathing the stale, partisan air of the national Capitol possibly succeed in forging the alliances that Senator Flanders found so essential to address the nation’s challenges?

I understand the arguments against term limits; I’ve long asserted them myself. But when a recent poll concluded that the American people are more comfortable with a colonoscopy or head lice than with the U.S. Congress, something is terribly wrong. The performance of our federal government could hardly be any worse than it is today, so I’m now willing to give term limits a try.

Most of the nation’s governors are term-limited, and most of them have been in office less than four years. There’s a big difference between these new governors and the folks in Washington. The governors are doing what they believe is necessary for the well-being of their states. Whether you agree with them or not, they have the courage of their convictions, and some really don’t care whether they’re reelected.

Conversely, in Congress, it’s all about reelection. That’s why they dole out earmarks and grants, currying favor with their constituents while dispensing trillions that we don’t have. Other nations are wondering what’s going on, and major credit agencies have downgraded our rating.

What We Can Learn From Coolidge

I doubt we’ll return to the days of Washington, who shunned political parties, or John Quincy Adams, who scorned them. The latter observed that “the country is so thoroughly given up to the spirit of party, that not to follow blindfolded the one or the other is an [unforgiveable] offense.” I’m not sure we’ll retreat from party allegiances soon, so we might as well try to make the process responsive and constructive.

What we need is more moderation. We need to calm down. We need to see problems not as crises, demanding immediate action and large expenditures, but through a different lens. We need to think more about history, and its sweep and rhythms and textures. We need to do more thinking and reasoning, and less talking and wrestling.

This is what Calvin Coolidge did best. They made fun of his quiet. They made jokes about his silences. He was neither glib nor easily moved to passion. He understood faction and turmoil and hard feelings, but he saw beyond that, and the country was better for it.

It’s an unsatisfying time in our nation’s political history. We seem angry as a society and polarized. Disagreements are as old as America itself, but we need to honor the legacy of our founders and make democracy work. We have an inspired example of how to succeed, offered by a simple man from Plymouth Notch, Vermont.

If every American were to study Coolidge’s life and times, perhaps the future would be brighter for the nation he served and loved.

James H. Douglas served as governor of Vermont, Calvin Coolidge’s home state, from 2003 to 2011. He is vice chair of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. This essay is adapted from a speech he gave in 2014.