Rather than proceed with cancer treatments in Arizona, John McCain thought it was his duty to appear back in Washington to cast a vote against Trumpcare, a misbegotten, hastily cobbled together, single-party, unvetted attempt to repeal (and not really replace) the ACA. But before doing so, he implored his colleagues to quit doing business in such a slipshod, hyper-partisan, untraditional, backroom manner.

In so many words, he called for a return to regular order. This now seems quaint after increasingly ad hoc legislating, with daggers drawn. But once Congress actually worked, and did so by a set of elaborately evolved rules.

There was a majority party and a loyal opposition, minority party. The two would swap places every so often as the voters dictated, often because the Ins had gone too far and a corrective seemed to be due. But despite these ups and downs, the Houses conducted themselves civilly and on many issues, especially the military, foreign policy and infrastructure, the sides saw eye to eye.

There was also a respected permanent infrastructure of committee and staff that included experts on the various arcane subjects that required legislation, such as tax law, entitlements, justice, military procurement, agriculture and so on. When laws or regulations were drafted, this institutional knowledge was brought to bear.

Hearings were also held by the appropriate committees to solicit public views, the wisdom of outside specialists or the wishes of affected parties. Lobbyists lobbied, pro and con, and eventually a product emerged from committee and went to a vote on the floor where amendments could be offered and debated.

Hardball was played, opinions differed, but the business was conducted with a modicum of
mutual respect. After all, the gentleman from Oklahoma and the gentlewoman from Maine were each Americans acting to represent their constituents.

This laborious, choreographed process wasn’t utopia, but it constituted a further layer of checks and balances to prevent acting in haste and repenting at leisure, and it proceeded by way of a customary route to a finished product.

Yes, there were cronyism and backscratching and horse trading and incomplete transparency and opportunities for vested interests to game the system and minority opinions to be ignored, but the alternative we are now witnessing is a poor substitute for regular order.

Special interests now choose the candidates, fund their campaigns, gerrymander their districts and dictate their agendas. the Ins now refuse to cooperate with the Outs on almost everything, so almost nothing can be achieved, unless the majority party can muster enough votes to pass it alone.

This produces gridlock and stasis, bitter internecine warfare and bad blood. And nothing will change so long as there is only hard right and hard left, no middle and compromise is a dirty word. The government is increasingly unable to govern, which anti-government zealots regard as victory. But things left undone today will come back to haunt us tomorrow, and a refusal to meet in the middle when an actual emergency comes along may spell catastrophe.

This paralysis hardly means, however, that nothing is being done. Efforts are under way in the executive departments to adjust regulations to please cronies and large donors (see “Tump’s Favorite Tycoon,” New Yorker, Aug. 28 for an example). Ideologues opposed to the mission, and even the existence of EPA, SEC, the departments of Energy, Justice, Education and many other government entities have been appointed to run them — into the ground, if possible. They are purging the ranks of those who value the department or agency, and are toiling tirelessly to not perform the government functions the agencies are required by law to provide. Budgets are being drafted to eliminate programs unpopular with those who have the president’s ear, wealthy corporate interests, anti-government acolytes. Laws are being drafted in secret and brought to a vote before members of Congress have time to learn what they contain.

Overnight the words “climate change” disappear from the website of the National Institutes of Health, scientists are purged, needed programs are slated for extinction. And the atrocities we see being committed are only the ones energetic reporters and alarmed leakers have managed to bring to light. Who knows what goes on in the deepening darkness where the usual rules are ignored, laws are broken and standards of government ethics are flouted?

This rule by stealth and fiat is the sort of thing you’d expect from a junta, cabal or autocracy, not from a democratic republic. Instead of regular order, we are being ruled by irregular disorder, and while it may serve the interests of a few, it does not serve the people of the United States who expect their government to busy itself doing what the Constitution promises — to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”