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One definition of "gridlock" is "a traffic jam so bad that no movement is possible." Anyone who has driven the Washington, DC, Beltway knows that vehicle traffic can get that way during rush hour. The way to break that cycle would be to ban motorists and build multi-tiered mass transit. However, this article will discuss another notion of what is commonly considered "political gridlock." That would be the phenomenon of governmental paralysis caused by all kinds of maneuvering, procedural quibbles, and - in the case of the US Senate - filibustering a piece of legislation to death. In the Senate, the only way to break gridlock is for one side of the aisle to have 60 votes.

Just as we could never ban vehicle traffic around out nation's capital without a significant disruption of the bloated bureaucracy our federal tax money has created, sadly we cannot ban politicians who sometimes cause the political gridlock that sometimes occurs. Our system is run by a confluence of special interests and lawmakers who are influenced and bankrolled by lobbyists and political action committees. The process, in turn, gives us a soiled and imperfect system where compromise must occur to get anything done at all. When compromise breaks down, gridlock can occur. The only way to avoid it is to have one-party rule. The President, the majority in the House of Representatives, and a super majority in the US Senate is one solution to gridlock.

What are the root causes of gridlock in Washington? Ironically, it seems that our founders, who wrote the Constitution, intended through separation of powers and checks and balances to hamstring our government and prevent it from becoming too powerful. Our President can veto any law, and it takes a super majority in both houses to override the veto. Therefore, our President can be a principal cause of gridlock. The way to stop this would be to change our Constitution. Likewise, the way to stop legislative gridlock in the Senate would be for that body to revoke its filibuster rule and allow a majority up or down vote on any bill. So gridlock may have actually been intended by our founders, who deeply distrusted big government and built the "poison pill" of separation of powers into our basic government structure.

Depending on one's point of view, gridlock is either a bad thing or a beneficial outcome of our 230+-year-old Constitution. The American voters have from time to time temporarily removed gridlock by overwhelmingly electing one party to all branches of government (the 2008 election, for example). The Democrats were handed the Presidency and rule of both houses (including a filibuster-proof Senate). What has resulted is the most breathtaking encroachment of the federal government into our banking and auto manufacturing system and unprecedented government deficit spending that will take generations to pay back. On the other hand, the banks will not fail, and we may be able to salvage some of our auto industry.

Once again, it will be the voters who decide in the 2010 midterm elections whether gridlock shall return to Washington, DC. If the Republicans win back a few more seats in the Senate, the first stages of gridlock will return. On the other hand, there will be those who complain that return to gridlock keeps our government from doing the good things it can do. Those who disagree with the latter outlook view government as a costly, inefficient and wasteful encumbrance that, in the words of Ronald Reagan, cannot solve problems because government IS the problem. So gridlock is either a bad thing or a good thing, depending on your view of government.

Learn more about this author, Jerry Curtis.
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