The Loyal Opposition

 

Speaking in the British parliament in 1826, John Hobhouse coined the term “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” meaning that members of a legislature may oppose government policies while still respecting the higher authority of the state and—when applied in the U.S.—the overall framework of the Constitution. In America, with no “Majesty,” the term has long been shortened to “the loyal opposition,” a characteristic of a healthy democracy that allows a party out of power to dissent from government policies without being accused of treason. 

With a loyal opposition, disagreeing with the party in power is not only allowed but is respectable and even essential, giving voters a choice in every election. Dissent gives us options, which is good if the options are based on facts and conform to our democratic traditions and to the Constitution.

Fundamental to the concept of a loyal opposition is the agreement that democracy is rooted in compromise, which is likewise rooted in mutual respect among legislators who trust that the same rules apply to all. Michael Ignatieff, former leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, has written that “in the house of democracy, there are no enemies.” If there are, “legislatures replace relevance with pure partisanship. Party discipline reigns supreme … negotiation and compromise are rarely practiced, and debate … becomes as venomously personal as it is politically meaningless.” 

“No enemies” is a lesson that seems to have been lost by many members of our Republican Party. President Nixon kept an enemies list and late-90s House Speaker Newt Gingrich signed a 1990 memo to GOP legislators recommending they describe Democrats with negative words such as “sick,” “radical,” and “traitors.” Gingrich encouraged a combative approach by the GOP, including hateful language and extreme partisanship, and often questioned Democrats’ patriotism. He compared them to fascists. 

Gingrich saw the GOP as in a war for power, an attitude that took root then blossomed during the Obama Administration. This “war” led directly to the claim, with no evidence, that President Biden didn’t win the 2020 election, to a scheme to appoint fake electors, and ultimately to the violent January 6 assault on the Capitol attempting to stop the official electoral count. All of this disregarded the Constitution and the 224-year tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. The loyal opposition had become a disloyal opposition.

Thankfully, there were Republican heroes, notably Vice-president Pence and several state officials who hadn’t drunk the party-first poison and followed the law despite heavy pressure from the former president. The poison ran deep, though: GOP leaders in the House and Senate blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 assault, no doubt afraid that an investigation would expose many of their party as conspirators disloyal to America. 

And the party-before-country poison is still at work. Last month, former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel tried to justify her support for the disgraced former president’s promise to pardon those convicted of participating in the January 6 Capitol assault by saying, “When you’re the RNC Chair, you kind of take one for the whole team.” In a democracy, the team is America, not any party. A loyal opposition would know that.

The party-first poison is so potent that House Republicans are now at war with each other with right-wing extremists threatening to throw out yet another Speaker of their own party for doing his job by cooperating with Democrats to pass vital legislation. Meanwhile, the former president is on trial for election interference and, along with three other pending cases, faces nearly 90 felony charges. He is estimated to have accumulated $100 million in legal fees so far. Early this year, President Obama posted a contrasting observation: “Eight years. Never had to hire a lawyer.”

 

                         

                          Impressive

 

A day and a half after the Baltimore bridge disaster, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (pictured) gave a press conference at the White House describing the accident in detail, the immediate and long-term effects on Baltimore’s busy port and its employees and area residents, on America’s imports and exports, and on plans for reopening the shipping channel and rebuilding the Interstate bridge. It was an impressive display of how much Buttigieg had learned in a day and a half.

He described the 990-foot-long container ship, the Dali, and noted that it was fully loaded with nearly 4,700 containers giving the ship a weight of more than 100,000 tons—a floating mass heavier than the largest aircraft carriers. With the aid of a video that showed the ship approaching the bridge at night, Buttigieg pointed out that the ship’s lights had gone out, briefly came back on, then gone out again, indicating a main power failure followed by the emergency generator kicking in than another failure. Without power, the ship couldn’t be steered and crashed into a critical support pier at about 9 mph causing the steel structure to collapse. 

The wreckage blocked the port’s navigable channel, and Buttigieg explained that 8,000+ jobs will be affected directly and thousands more indirectly until the port is reopened. He said that $100 million of cargo goes through Baltimore’s port every day. Unless other East Coast ports can handle some of the trade, the supply chains of bulk cargo, cars and farm machinery, and other manufactured and agricultural goods will be disrupted nationwide. Congestion on area roads will increase because of the loss of a major commuter route.

After serious supply disruptions during the pandemic, the recent Jobs and Infrastructure Act created a new freight office in the Transportation Department to coordinate the movement of goods. Buttigieg explained that ocean shipping isn’t centrally controlled like air traffic, so “having these tools allows us to create coordination that just didn’t exist before.”

Buttigieg said that the bridge was built in the 1970s and the Dali is “orders of magnitude bigger than cargo ships in service at the time [typically four times heavier].” He confirmed that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will conduct an independent investigation, and if they “determine anything that should be considered in the regulation, inspection, design, or funding of bridges in the future, we will be ready to apply those findings.”

Meanwhile, Buttigieg said, the federal government was already working with city, county, and state officials, Maryland congresspersons, and the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers to quickly open the port, remove bridge wreckage, and remove the ship whose bow was pinned to the shallow riverbed by the weight of a bridge section that fell on it. 

Buttigieg confirmed that to expedite recovery, President Biden said that the federal government will pay for the project, including the cost of replacing the bridge. Buttigieg also said “rebuilding will not be quick or easy or cheap, but we will get it done.” Asked by a reporter if he would “go after the shipping company,” the Secretary said, “Any private party that is found responsible and liable will be held accountable.”

Meanwhile, government agencies were wasting no time. The day after the press conference, the largest floating crane on the East Coast arrived from New York soon followed by others. The next day, ironworkers began cutting the bridge wreckage into manageable pieces while divers took sonar scans of the underwater debris in the channel. 

Secretary Buttigieg glanced at his notes once or twice, but mostly spoke eloquently while looking at his audience. His was an impressive example of how to inform the public during an emergency. Good job.