The compact fluorescent light bulb is a metaphor for civic life in the early 21st century. The light is either on or it’s off. There is no in-between. It says so right there on the outdoor spotlights I installed after the snow melted: “Not Dimmable.”
The energy-saving bulb is supposed to help save us from global warming, which is, like the bulb itself, one of those either-or propositions. Either you believe or you don’t. Nuance is not permitted. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.
In lighting, litigating, legislating and so many other ways, subtlety is disappearing from public discourse. There is no rhetorical rheostat to illuminate our lives with something between harsh fluorescence and dim benightedness.
The trend is pronounced in politics, and it’s worse, as it is now in Colorado, when one party controls the three parts of the lawmaking process – House, Senate and governor’s office.
Gov. Bill Ritter, who would like to be governor for all the people, is beset by those in his party who are looking for revenge or redemption or something similar after wandering in the political wilderness for 40 years – or, to be literal about it, 44 years.
The AFL-CIO warns that if Ritter doesn’t approve another Labor Peace Act revision sent to him by the legislature, the union hierarchy will ask the Democrats to move their 2008 national convention out of Denver.
Never mind that none of this is likely to happen. Legislators say they aren’t interested in introducing another bill this year that echoes the vetoed House Bill 1072. The national Democratic Party needs to bolster its relations with the swing states of the West and won’t renege on its promise to Denver.
The AFL-CIO’s tactic comes across as a power play by bullies who in fact don’t have the power they once did. And it makes the Democrats look bad.
But the either-or approach gets to be irresistible when one party holds all the reins, and some of the legislative Democrats are overreaching, too. They’re pushing legislation that was vetoed when Bill Owens was governor. Some of it was good legislation, but not all of it was.
And then there are partisan confrontations like the resolution opposing President Bush’s “surge” of more troops into Iraq. Proponents dismiss arguments that the state has no role in international policy, and they point out that the Republicans passed a resolution in 2003, when they controlled everything, supporting the Iraq war.
Well, it was partisan and unnecessary when the Republicans did it, too. The mature approach would be to avoid the mistakes of the past.
That’s the problem with one-party rule; there’s no need to compromise. Ritter’s Democratic predecessors, Govs. Dick Lamm and Roy Romer, succeeded largely because the legislature wasn’t on their side. For all but two of their combined 24 years of governorship, Republicans controlled both House and Senate. (The exception was Democratic control of the House, but not the Senate, in the 1975-76 session.)
Lamm and Romer had consistently high approval ratings in public opinion polls, and their differences with the Republican legislature were a big reason for that. They could stand firm and look tough and principled and not have to worry that the legislature would accomplish anything outlandish. If it tried anything funny, they’d veto it.
Bill Owens, too, did a better job of governing for all the people when he had to cope with a legislature controlled by Democrats.
It makes no difference whether the single ruling party is Republicans or Democrats; split control is better. It’s like a lampshade to mute the glare. There’s less mischief, and less temptation to overreach.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
