[M]ANCHESTER — Former Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, who often found himself dealing with a Democrat-dominated Legislature, says he had to develop a few strategies to steer Vermont away from ruts of dysfunction.
Douglas shared his thoughts on partisan and bipartisan government — both in Montpelier and Washington — during an event sponsored by the Green Mountain Academy and the Keelan Family Foundation that attracted well over 100 to the Manchester Community Library last week.
“It is an unusual time, to be sure,” Douglas said, describing the aftermath of Donald Trump’s surprising and polarizing election to the presidency in November and the roiled nature of an administration “still feeling its way along” since Jan. 20 with several key positions still unfilled.
Citing a few of the administration’s policy decisions, Douglas suggested in his trademark low-key style that perhaps this was not the way to forge bipartisan agreements.
The president’s budget plan, for instance, “is problematic in many respects and assumes a 3 percent growth rate in our (gross domestic product), which I would love to see, but most economists predict we’ll be well below that in the next decade,” Douglas said. He added that “to build a budget on a growth rate that is not realistic is pretty unlikely to be sustainable in the long run.”
“The fact he has a Republican majority in both houses of Congress ought to make it easier for a Republican president to put through his agenda, but there is discord in the family as well,” Douglas said. “So where this all leads, I don’t know.”
He also quoted from a column in The Economist, suggesting that those Trump opponents now calling for his impeachment are “engaging at his level, basically, and they bear the risk of being criticized as the ones who break the country apart, by just focusing on that, as opposed to … letting him implement his agenda and seeing how it comes out.”
The former governor, who’s been talking about the decline of bipartisan effort as a member of the Governors’ Council of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, said he would place straightforwardness and a willingness to listen highest among the keys to overcoming governmental gridlock.
While the prospects for change appear grim at times, Douglas said he believes bipartisanship can make a comeback nationally and in state governments.
Discussing the obstacles, Douglas said members of Congress have a job approval rating of 17 percent, “and it has been hovering around there for a long time, regardless of which party is in the majority.”
That leaves “two branches of government where the job approval rating is ‘underwater,’ as the pollsters say,” Douglas said, “and that doesn’t make it very satisfying for anybody.”
The reason, he said, seems obvious: a lack of significant progress on major issues that have been stuck in crisis mode for decades — such as the mounting national debt, shrinking economic opportunity for many and the unaffordability of health care.
He has asked members of Congress what might ease the current rigidness and was told that, unlike in the past, there is little or no socializing across party lines, partly due to the constant pressure for lawmakers to rush back home to raise campaign funding.
A few decades ago, members of Congress and their families would take time for a weekend of social interaction “and get to know one another on a bipartisan basis,” he said, “but that is a thing of the past.”
A former legislator, Douglas said that, when he knew he would be dining with a fellow lawmaker, he tended to “lay off the rhetoric, a little, you know, during debate in the legislative chamber, so I think we have to find a way to facilitate that.”
Another trend encouraging partisan thinking, he said, has been the gerrymandering of legislative districts in many states to make it difficult or impossible to dislodge the majority party drawing up the districts.
“Then the contest is in the primary, not the November election,” Douglas said, meaning candidates “have to be truer to your base, more conservative if you’re a Republican, more liberal if you’re a Democrat, and so we get members of Congress who are less centrist.”
Some states, he noted, have gone to redistricting by a nonpartisan commission in an attempt to break that cycle. But he said his favorite method is the one used in Iowa, which loads a computer with population and other data and “pushes a button” to create its House districts.
An influence that apparently is causing polarization in the Senate, Douglas said, is an identifiable trend toward Americans moving to states they identify most with in terms of political ideology, whether liberal or conservative. “And so, we are polarizing ourselves, and I think that’s unfortunate,” he said.
The media are another factor promoting partisanship, he said, noting “the 24/7 news cycle, where all the cable channels have to fill the time with something, and we get a nonstop feeding frenzy of news and commentary. … I think that’s contributing to our sense of angst and polarization.”
In Vermont, Douglas said, the situation “is better than most places, but not as good as it used to be.”
He is sure the current “kerfuffle over the state budget will work itself out,” but Douglas said he is seeing many more party-line votes, especially in the House, than during his time as a lawmaker in the 1970s and when serving as governor, from 2003-11.
“In my time, it was a rarity when parties lined up against one another,” he said, adding that voting then tended to break along various lines depending on the issue, having little to do with party, such as rural versus urban.
More state lawmakers now spend less time in Montpelier during the session, he said, traveling home on a daily basis and perhaps not socializing as much with members of other political parties.
Vermont also has faced significant challenges since the dawn of the 21st century, he said, such as a declining and aging population, especially in southern Vermont; declining school enrollment; a shortage of affordable housing; relatively high health care costs; and a tax and regulatory burden considered by business groups to be among the least inviting in the nation.
Dealing with those knotty issues has naturally led to partisan disputes, Douglas said, but he suggested that dealing with those could force liberal and conservative politicians to agree on more centrist approaches going forward — especially concerning what he called the state’s “affordability crisis that has lingered for some time.”
Douglas said he was “delighted to see a (state) budget with no new taxes or fees for the first time in quite a long time, and that’s a positive step.”
“But I hope we will be able to find common ground with the governor to move forward and attack the cost of living, because in the end, I think that’s what we are going to need to reverse these undesirable trends,” he said.
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