We Have Met the Enemy, And it is Not “Partisanship”
By 
The biggest problem with Larry Lessig’s claim to have hacked politics is that the political theory behind it doesn’t make any sense. But let’s leave that aside and focus on the merits. Would, as Lessig suggests, most of our problems disappear if only we had higher electoral turnout, reduced “partisanship,” and restricted the role of money in politics? History strongly indicates otherwise:
Even stranger than his so-called platform is Lessig’s focus on the evils of “partisanship.” This is the mantra of people whose politics is antipolicitcs: Both Sides Do It. The truth is more mundane. Democrats generally support Lessig’s reform goals and Republicans, at both the federal and state level, vociferously oppose them. I agree that it would be desirable to have a bipartisan consensus on these procedural reforms, but Lessig’s plan for achieving it is wishful thinking all the way down. In practice, Lessig’s reforms will require solid Democratic majorities, not gimmicks.
To see the limitations of Lessig’s proposed reforms, we just need to go back to mid-20th century American politics. Many of the things Lessig seeks to solve were attenuated or absent. Partisanship was very weak. Turnout in presidential elections generally exceeded 60%. More stringent campaign finance reforms were in place, and campaigns were a lot cheaper, reducing the role of money in politics. So this was when American politics was actually functional and representative, right?
Hardly. Between 1938 and 1963, Congress was dominated by a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans that consistently thwarted progressive reforms and civil rights legislation. Probably the most important legislation of the period was the Taft-Hartley Act, in which veto-proof bipartisan coalitions reached across the aisle to eviscerate American labor. The statute remains a major source of American inequality today.
Conversely, party-line or near-party line votes achieved the major achievements of the Obama administration, including the Affordable Care Act and major stimulus and financial regulation laws. You might argue that all of these statutes are flawed, and I would agree, but then so were most of the major achievements of the New Deal and Great Society. And while those earlier periods of progressive reform had more nominal bipartisan cooperation, it’s not a coincidence that some Republicans felt compelled to do along only when faced with atypically huge Democratic supermajorities. Partisanship isn’t the enemy of major reform: it’s more of a necessary condition. And even if you mistakenly think it would be beneficial, the era of liberal northern Republicans and a conservative Democratic south isn’t coming back.
The brutal truth is that the choices that make American government largely dysfunctional were not made by the Supreme Court in 2010 or by state legislatures following the 2010 census. They were made by the framers of the Constitution in 1787. The large number of veto points established by the system were designed to make transformative change enormously difficult, and they have.
More on the subject here.