One of the Benefits of Trump Blowing Up the Republican Party: We Will Likely Have Another Long Period of Sustained Policy Coherence

“My problem is, for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics, they’re gonna think of you. They’re gonna think of you and your idiot followers passing out daisies to soldiers and trying to levitate the Pentagon.”
- Aaron Sorkin putting words into the mouth of Tom Hayden as he rebukes Abbie Hoffman for his reliance on political theater rather than debate and reason in the film The Trial of The Chicago 7, set in 1969.

There is a bright side to Donald Trump immolating the Republican Party: we will be back to a period of one party dominance for a generation or two and in that sort of dominance, we will be able to pass legislation that will mean a coherent policy can again emerge, as it did from 1801 to 1861, 1861 to 1933, and from 1933 to 1969.

Since 1969, politics has taken a back seat to entertainment. We have, as Tom Hayden predicted, been living in a time of political theater. 

Perhaps the simplest example of this is Rush Limbaugh who visited the White House during George H. Bush's presidency and loved for years after to tell the story of how the president carried his luggage. Rush Limbaugh was an entertainer. We, as a society, paid him 200X as much as we paid our president. The president himself showed him the deference people in earlier times had reserved for, well, presidents. Since 1969, we don't so much have politics as political theater.

In your lifetime, all you have known is political division, a hollering across the aisle of congress in a poor imitation of actual theater, a drama of stalemates. Now because a former college football coach (Tuberville - who gained fame by standing on the sidelines coaching young men who entertained millions with the theater of college football) won't approve the appointments of hundreds of officers, we have a military crisis. Tuberville knows nothing about national security but he does know how to entertain Fox viewers. And because government is so divided, one man can jeopardize our military. That sort of casual hostage taking by one man of a key institution like the military would not be possible in time when one party dominates.

What you have not known is what Americans of past generations have known: a coherent, persistent set of policies championed by a dominant party that changed reality for the average American.
The good news about Trump destroying the Republican Party is that we will be back to a time when policies can move in one particular direction.

The Misery Index Could Bode well for Biden

The Misery Index might be the simplest measure of how Americans feel about the economy. It is the sum of the unemployment rate and inflation. If either unemployment or inflation is high - particularly if both are high - Americans are unhappy.

Fair or not, attitudes towards the president go up when the misery index goes down and go down when this misery index goes up. Americans were angry with Carter in no small part because inflation and unemployment rose so much during his presidency and were happy with Reagan because they dropped so much during his.

No president's term ended with as low a misery index as Biden now has. This should - but won't necessarily - translate into higher approval ratings for Biden.

Of course feelings are complicated - particularly when it comes to misery - as Morrisey knew.

"I was looking for a job, and then I found a job

And heaven knows I'm miserable now"

- The Smiths, song released in 1984 when the misery index 

was high and the youths were particularly disenchanted, you might even say, miserable.