1 gen 2002 anni - bipartisan lawmaking ends

Descrizione:

As the twenty-first century enters its third decade, three significant developments have profoundly shaped the American present: the long war in the Middle East that began with the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 (also known as 9/11); the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African American president; and the 2016 election to the White House of the brazenly contrarian businessman and television personality, Donald Trump. Too little time has passed to assess precisely how these events will help to define the twenty-first century, but all three have already changed the course of history.

Domestic Conflict and War in the Middle East
The 2000 presidential election briefly offered the promise of a break with the intense partisanship of the final Clinton years. The Republican nominee, George W. Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush, cast himself as a “uniter, not a divider” against his opponent, Albert (“Al”) Gore, Clinton’s vice president. Their race for the White House would join those of 1876 and 1960 as the closest and most contested in American history. Gore won the popular vote, amassing 50.9 million votes to Bush’s 50.4 million, but fell short in the electoral college, 267 to 271.

Late on election night, the vote count in Florida had given Bush the narrowest of victories — swinging the state’s 25 electoral votes into his column and edging him past Gore. As was their legal prerogative, the Democrats demanded hand recounts in several counties. A month of tumult followed, until the U.S. Supreme Court, splitting directly along conservative-liberal lines, ordered the recount stopped and let Bush’s victory stand. Recounting ballots without a consistent standard to determine “voter intent,” the Court reasoned, violated the rights of Floridian voters under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. As if acknowledging the frailty of its own argument, the Court declared that Bush v. Gore was not to be regarded as precedent. In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the transparently partisan decision undermined “the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

This controversial opening act proved a harbinger of renewed partisan politics. Although Bush had positioned himself as a moderate, countertendencies drove his administration. His vice president, the uncompromising conservative Richard (Dick) Cheney, became, with Bush’s consent, virtually a copresident. Bush also brought into the administration his campaign advisor, Karl Rove, who argued that a permanent Republican majority could be built on the party’s conservative base. On Capitol Hill, Rove’s ambition for the GOP was reinforced by Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, who in 1995 had declared “all-out war” on the Democrats. To win that war, DeLay pushed congressional Republicans to endorse a fierce partisanship. The Senate, although more collegial, went through a similar hardening process. After 2002, with Republicans in control of both Congress and the White House, bipartisan lawmaking came to an end.

EXAM TIP
Evaluate the impact of the 9/11 attacks on American foreign policy and on domestic issues of civil liberties.

A line graph shows Gross Federal debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (G D P).
FIGURE 30.3 Gross Federal Debt as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product

Economists argue that the best measure of a nation’s debt is its size relative to the overall economy — that is, its percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). The size of the total U.S. debt declined from its World War II high until the 1980s, when it increased dramatically under President Reagan. Since then, the debt has consistently increased as a percentage of GDP, aside from a small decline under President Clinton’s deficit-reduction plans in the mid-1990s.

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