Great political systems require robust opposition

An influential section of the American Republican party seems to believe that burning down the house is preferable to sharing it, writes Sholto Byrnes.

Close observers of American politics will be well aware of a phenomenon that has, according to your tastes, either plagued or energised the Republican party over the last four years: long-standing incumbent senators and congressmen being ousted in primaries by Tea Party insurgents who consider their opponents insufficiently conservative. The battle for the soul of a party is one thing, it is quite another when one side in that battle contends that collaborating with the other main party is tantamount to treason. “Bipartisanship in the United States has fallen off a cliff,” wrote the former Clinton adviser Charles Kupchan in 2012, but the truth was that approach wasn’t just ceasing to be a normal and necessary part of the legislative process on Capitol Hill – it was being actively attacked.

“The time for being collegial is past,” said Richard Mourdock, during his ultimately successful attempt to unseat Richard Lugar as the six term Senator for Indiana in the same year. “It’s time for confrontation.”

Similar rhetoric has been heard recently during the Republican primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and a strong Tea Party challenge to Senator Tad Cochran of Mississippi, who only held on because of a late surge of mainly black, Democratic voters.

Some liberals in the US have cheered the elevation of politicians that even Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate, has called “wacko birds”. They seem to think that such people standing on a Republican ticket will mean easy wins next year for the Democrats.

The crucial point here is the importance to a healthy democracy of not only a loyal opposition, but one prepared to be constructive too. It must be accepted that loyalty is to the state itself, and that opposition to the elected government of the day is “an adversarial function critical to democracy”, as the Canadian academic and former Liberal Party leader ­Michael Ignatieff has put it. At the same time, the constructive element dictates that the interest of the party should never override that of the nation, and that scoring points against incumbent opponents – such as the government shutdowns forced by Republican Congresses at the expense of both Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s administrations – for purely ideological reasons, when they clearly cost the country dearly, are gravely disloyal and to be counted as triumphs only by partisan hacks.

The recent record of US Republicans matters because America’s leaders still talk about theirs being the “indispensable nation”, whose mission to export and support liberal democracy worldwide is unquestioned, at least at home. But what example are they holding up to be followed at the moment?

In Egypt, for instance, there can be no doubt that an overwhelming majority of those who voted cast their ballots for President El Sisi. But the legitimacy of his rule, and of his supporters, will only be boosted if subsequent elections – to the parliament, say – are more competitive. Egypt will have to accept that other parties can be opposed to his policies but still be supportive of him, as the holder of the country’s preeminent office, and of Egypt’s constitutional arrangements.

There are plenty of examples of new or developing democracies where the bedding down of these systems is being held back by the reluctance of ruling parties to accept that electoral opposition is a part of healthy growth and maturity. Disagreement on one issue, far from signalling a state of war, need not preclude cross-party collaboration on another. In too many cases, opposition to an elected government is being portrayed as disloyalty to the state itself.

Of course, there will always be leaders who can see no good either in their political enemies or those who desire a proper system of checks and balances. When the then British foreign secretary Francis Pym stated that he wished his party, the Conservatives, would not win a landslide in 1983, believing that such parliamentary majorities rarely resulted in good governance, his prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, fired him. But a willingness to compromise, to understand that your opponents may still be good men and women of principle, albeit principles with which you do not agree is crucial to the functioning and maintenance of a polity in which all believe they have a stake.

A very influential section of the American Republican party seems to believe that burning down the house is preferable to any risk of having to share. They are setting a very bad example to the very peoples they have frequently bombed, invaded and massacred in order for them to enjoy the democracy they are so keen to share, let alone all the others who are expected to follow America’s tune. Time for “the indispensable nation” to act more in keeping with its own high-flown principles – especially if it expects others to emulate them.

Sholto Byrnes is a Doha-based commentator and consultant