Beyond the Dome

Is it really a good idea for one party to be in control of both the White House and Congress? That question is starting to surface in John McCain’s campaign and in fundraising pitches for Republican Senate races — though, as you can imagine, it’s an appeal heavier on election-season red meat than on high-minded constitutional appeal to checks and balances.

Lately, McCain has been throwing a line into his stump speech about what would happen if Democrats gain “total control of Washington.” (Answer: higher taxes that would make a bad economy worse.) The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which faces a potential nightmare scenario on Nov. 4 if Democrats win the 60 seats needed to break filibusters, sent out a fundraising e-mail last night warning that “Barack Obama wants no checks on his power … no debate … no one to question his authority. He wants a blank check.”

And last week, the office of House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio circulated a Wall Street Journal editorial, titled “A Liberal Supermajority,” that tries to scare conservatives about what Democrats could do with the White House and Congress: enact single-payer health care, conduct investigations of the financial crisis “to further their agenda to control more of the private economy,” give more power to unions, do the bidding of trial lawyers and the National Education Association, consolidate their power with national election-day registration, etc.

It’s not exactly a surprise that McCain and congressional leaders would turn to these kinds of arguments to rally their supporters, but there is a serious subject at the heart of it. One-party government certainly helps to break the endless stalemate in Washington, but it can easily lead to a decline in oversight of the executive branch and a general refusal to ask healthy questions about the president’s agenda.

That certainly happened during the first six years of the Bush presidency, and the results — the Iraq war, a series of questionable antiterrorism policies, and politically driven policies that undermined many of the agencies — made much of the country understand the consequences when lawmakers don’t pay enough attention to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama himself may turn out to be a sensible and levelheaded president, if that’s the way the election goes, but he’ll bring in an entire administration full of new people and they won’t all be saints.

It’s an argument that could appeal to independent voters, whose support McCain desperately needs, since he’s losing them in droves right now. In a new ABC News-Washington Post poll, 43 percent of independent voters said they’d rather have divided government, while only 34 percent said they’d be okay with one party controlling the executive and legislative branches.

Still, it doesn’t appear that checks and balances will be the issue that will suddenly turn this election around for McCain and the Republicans, given all of the Bush fatigue that’s driving this election. And in general, the public doesn’t seem too concerned that the executive and legislative branches should be controlled by different parties. A CBS News-New York Times poll released yesterday found only a narrow preference for divided government, with 41 percent saying the branches should be controlled by different parties while 36 percent said the same party should be in charge of both.

It had been a wider split in February 2007, shortly after the Republicans had lost control of Congress. Why is it narrower now? Because Democrats are now happy to have one party in charge of both branches — a reversal of the attitude they had when the Republicans were in charge — while Republicans now want divided government. Of course.