This article was originally written in March 2016. I miscalculated some things, but I stand by my conclusion in words made more urgent by the outcome.
Beneath the copious nonsense, the 2016 presidential race is about fixing a broken America. On the Republican side, it's an ideological fight between Trump's deal making and Cruz's bible thumping. On the Democratic side, the debate centers more on whether Sanders or Clinton will be better able to "get stuff done".
But don't kid yourselves: no one will.
Getting stuff done is not what the next presidency will be about. We have gotten to such polar extremes in the U.S. that the next four, possibly eight years will be solely about forming some sort of image of what we are as one country--right now we're at least two--and laying the groundwork for what will come next. Prepare for a lot of arguing, but a logjam of inaction.
As a Sanders supporter, even I think his European-inspired policies are a bit much for the American people to swallow today. (Wherefore art thou Elizabeth Warren?) But if Republicans dismiss Sanders as some old, commie kook, do not forget their visceral hatred of everything Clinton, reaching back all the way to 1992.
Reagan biographer Jacob Weisberg reminds us that, "In the early days of the presidency of Bill Clinton, congressional Republicans essentially went on strike, treating any legislative accomplishment as a Republican defeat ... With President Obama, they have largely refused to accept the basic legitimacy of a Democratic president."
But Obama and Sanders are protected in a way that Clinton is not. Overtly racist or anti-Semitic language, let alone policy, even from the extreme right, brings on a merciless media firestorm. Meanwhile, Republicans regularly speak and vote for overtly sexist positions with impunity. Except for its most egregious excesses, sexism in America is business as usual.
Democrats can take heart, however, that a Republican president would fare no better. Even in the case of a GOP-led congress, Cruz and especially Trump have no shortage of enemies within party ranks. More likely, whoever wins the presidential race will galvanize the other side into a congressional takeover, keeping the White House and Capitol Hill at the present impasse. And expect Democrats to be feeling vengeful.
At this point, even basics like passing a budget or filling a Supreme Court vacancy can't be taken for granted. So barring the rampant use of executive orders--risky for any president eyeing a second term--or a rallying cataclysm on the scale of 9/11, the next administration will be a stalemate regardless of who wins.
So where does that leave us?
Whoever wins this election, by proposing and defending policy, even if those efforts fail, will turn the dial a few notches in one direction or another. By pulling to the extremes, a solution emerges somewhere in the middle. (The other option is civil war.)
Just as the prospect of Trump and Cruz make a Romney or Bush suddenly seem more palatable to the opposition, the specter of Sanders makes Establishment progressives more acceptable across the aisle. With Clinton, we'll probably go through all this again in 2020, perhaps with a more credible Republican field.
But we won't fix a broken America until we agree on what that America looks like. That is what the next presidency will be about. And beneath the copious nonsense, that debate is about the values of a changing country.