The Only Way Out is Through Each Other
An answer for those fed up with political policy whiplash
The National Constitution Center produces timely political discussions, and last month I learned from debates on:
The limits of Presidential power in immigration policy
Congressional power limits in foreign policy and diplomacy
The proper extent of judicial power
America’s biggest constitutional crises
Regulating the size of the federal government
These debates I listened to were all recorded in 2014-2016.
Little is new under the sun.
I. The American Seesaw
The relevance of debates from a decade ago highlights that in the last many years lasting policy change has become rare. The start of new Presidential administrations reverses what came before. Here are three examples:
Immigration. In 2015, Obama faced criticism for executive abuse of power by protecting from deportation 5.3 million people who had illegally come to America. In 2017, Trump was accused of abusing executive authority to force the building of a wall with Mexico. In 2021, Biden used executive authority to revoke Trump’s Executive order including addressing “humanitarian challenges at the southern border.” In 2025, Trump announced an immigration crackdown against “a large-scale invasion” by migrants. Seesaw.
Regulation of carbon emissions. When the Senate blocked the Waxman-Markey climate bill in 2009, in 2013 Obama used executive action to put in place his climate plan without Congress. Trump in 2017 ordered making it easier for fossil fuel extraction and overturned several Obama’s executive orders. In 2021, Biden announced his executive order of “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science To Tackle the Climate Crisis” revoking eight Trump Executive orders. In 2025, Trump announced his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords (again) and the advancement of fossil fuel extraction. Seesaw.
Racial preferences. The George W. Bush administration issued guidance in 2008 to universities to limit considerations of race in admissions, and the Obama administration in 2011 reversed that position, and by executive order established diversity programs within the federal workforce. In 2017, Trump worked to thwart affirmative action efforts. Biden, on his first day of as president in 2021 signed Executive Order 13985 advancing racial equity throughout the federal government and revoking nine Trump Executive Orders. Immediately upon taking office, Trump rolled back more than a dozen Biden executive orders on racial policy and issued an order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”
What lives by executive orders dies by executive orders, and for last fifteen years American federal policy has looked like this:
Though much of lasting consequence has happened in the world in the last 15 years (more on this later), little has endured through actions taken by the American people’s representatives.
Which is why debates from 2014-2016 could be mistaken for debates today.
One might say this seesawing is because of the explosion of executive orders. But the data does not support this. Teddy Roosevelt busted loose with executive order euphoria and the practice reached its apogee under his fifth-cousin Franklin, but an epoch of executive order excess today is not.
Structural problems like executive orders are easy to blame, but they are a symptom, not the disease. As Pedestal explores, the American people are the problem: our polarization and our unwillingness to work together is why nothing of policy substance endures.
This logjam is evident in Americans refusing to get behind any large political majority in Presidential election results: we are currently living in the longest era ever of Presidential elections decided by 10 points or fewer. Since the end of the Cold War, no president has enjoyed a significant and lasting mandate from the people. Recent popular vote results are:
2024: 48% (Dem) – 50% (Rep)
2020: 51% D - 47% R
2016: 48% D - 46% R
2012: 51% D - 47% R
The last time anyone won by more than 10 points was during the Cold War (1984). Unlike our era, much of American history features wins of more than 10 points (1984, 1972, 1964, 1956, 1952, 1940, 1936, 1932, 1928, 1924, 1920, 1912, 1904, 1872, 1864, 1860, 1856, 1836, 1832, 1828) (and I can’t find data before that).
The right and left poles of America bog us down.
II. The Argentine Seesaw
The South American America of the 19th century, Argentina, provides a case study in left-right dysfunction. In the late 19th century, European migrants hoping for a brighter future flocked to both America and Argentina. Like those headed to New York City, these migrants to Argentina helped swell the ranks of the most populous city in the New World outside the United States: Buenos Aires. The built a massive subway system and a European-style grand capital. But because Argentina’s political culture differed from America, what followed turned out different.
Here’s what Argentina’s left-right chaos looked like:
In 1916, progressive, left-leaning Argentine leaders won the presidency but not Congress. Conservatives blocked reform laws so change proved impossible. Protests in the streets in 1919 were put down by force killing hundreds of citizens.
In the 1920’s, the far-left engaged in military attacks against the police. The far-right emerged in parallel, increasingly advocating military dictatorship to stop their opponents.
By 1930, the left-right paramilitary war ended when a right-wing coup seized power and suppressed leftists.
In 1946, Juan Peron, a military officer who adopted pro-worker policies, fused elements of the left-right divide, and embraced nationalism and nationalization and used violence to repress political opponents.
A decade later, a coup forced out Peron and banned the Peronist party.
Cycles of left-right violence spiraled. Right-wing paramilitary groups carried out violent attacks. Left-wing paramilitarily groups carried out violent attacks.
Coups continued every few years.
In 1973, Peron returned and won election—and died within one year. Violence spiraled.
In 1976 a right-wing coup seized power and brutally repressed the left-wing and anyone associated with it, murdering some 30,000 Argentine citizens, often kidnapping and torturing them.
In 1983, democratic elections returned and have persisted for 42 years. Hooray!
While far better than what came before, these elections nonetheless continued the right-left flip-flop. A market-oriented right-wing leader is elected, people grow impatient their lives don’t improve, so they elect a clientelist Peronist party of the left. The leftists give handouts and ride commodities-led booms, until inflation spikes and they are voted out of power. And the right comes back.
In 2023, Javier Milei won election as a libertarian economist promising to clear out entrenched forces of political patronage but without making the country so economically miserable that he’s voted out of power. How he’s doing is hard to gauge as polls are contradictory; for example the poor love him and the rich hate him or the rich love him and the poor hate him. To move forward, Argentina must break a culture of distrust of the opposition as 1) lazy and thwarting or 2) oligarchic and rapacious. It is an extremely difficult task.
Argentina in the 20th and 21st centuries has endured regular political seesawing. It’s akin to an unsolved Rubik’s cube: a new party comes to power, looks at an unsolved cube, and flips over to a different side hoping for a better result. But the scramble remains just as random and hopeless.
Little progress is made.
III. Convince More Folks
Argentina’s history illustrates that, like most democracies, little enduring progress is made as long as large numbers of citizens continue to prefer thwarting “the other side” rather than winning them over.
Which means:
The narrow Presidential elections of the past 13 years might suggest that Americans are too set in their ways to change. But every person I have met in life, of every demographic background, holds one-of-a-kind perspectives, all grounded in their lived experience. They care little about political parties, and a lot about what makes sense personally. People I know who are Biden 2020-Trump 2024 or Trump 2020-Harris 2024 voters all have unique, personal reasons for their changes. These numbers add up. Eight million, four-hundred thousand Americans voted in 2012 for a left-wing, optimistic, black, young, college professor and four years later voted for a right-wing, angry, white, old, self-promoter. Americans clearly have a tolerance for an extremely broad range of visions. The more you narrow demographic analyses from broad categories or race, sex, or education-level, the more interesting the data becomes. For example. evangelical, white women with college degrees shifted +44% to Trump from 2020 to 2024.
Importantly, it is well-known that large areas of policy consensus exist amongst supermajorities of Americans. Policy experts have highlighted them. You can find one list of topics where 75% of Americans agree here and another list of obviously popular centrist policies here.
What stifles us are the cultural elements of American dysfunction. In particular, political sanctimony, the belief we are right, is destroying trust between citizens.
Stated bluntly: Americans of all political stripes should stop being so damn arrogant.
Most if not all people agree that what makes something evil is that it harms society or individuals. But whether a specific decision or policy or idea or law is evil— that is a judgement each person makes for themselves. Citizens will disagree whether something overall harms or helps society. Yet, if we tell ourselves that what “the other side” wants is destructive of society, we commit intellectual larceny by robbing our fellow citizens of their right to decide what is ruinous or not for society.
If Americans hate the last 15 years of policy flip-flopping – and it wouldn’t take a poll to show that most Americans are annoyed if not livid when the opposing party’s administration reverses direction from the previous one—they should start convincing more folks. For with large majorities in alignment, progress can be made and persist.
Convincing is actually very easy. Allow me to demonstrate: “What do you believe? Why do you believe that? And why must that be true for us to have a good society?” Okay, now I’m entirely convinced that what you believe is important to you and that you think it will better our society. Done!
Yes, I see what I did there.
If you want to convince other people of the wisdom of what you think it starts with caring about what they believe. Michael Baharaeen did an admirable job of this, making a good faith argument for left-wing positions on Trans rights and then trying to persuade those who hold those views using arguments from authority figures they might trust like scientists and scholars, and then pointing out that 79% of Americans and two-thirds of Democrats believe, for example, on sex-based limits for sports participation. Did he convince anyone? Probably at least a few. Because he lived the words of American business writer and coach Stephen Covey (p. 249):
“The single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations is this: seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
IV. World Not Standing Still
It matters that America be able to navigate these challenges together and with lasting progress because in the last fifteen years, the world has not stopped changing.
In 2005, there were hardly any smart phones. Today, there are more smartphones than people, transforming human access to each other and information.
281 million people, nearly an entire United States’ worth, and a record number, now live outside the places they were born.
American manufacturing employment decreases created political upheaval, but perhaps equally significant is the continued growth in automation that has led American manufacturing output to keep booming. As any visitor to a factory will attest, factories are busy but empty of people. The impacts of technology automation are a wrecking ball of political force:
Similarly, artificial intelligence has grown in training data by a factor of 10 billion and will disrupt tens of millions of jobs and create new political uncertainties
More countries fight military conflicts today than at any time since World War II
Because of these and other changes, America has changed plenty, and will continue to change.
But its federal leadership has gone in circles. Are the President, the courts, or Congress all doing too much or too little— these are policy debates that swirl around the toilet bowl of American leadership and dynamism.
To break the impasse of constant political seesawing, Americans need to agree on more.
I am prepared to be wrong about everything, and because I believe America can do good for its people and the world, I hope others will be prepared, too.
The only way out is through each other.