Nappy Headed Black Child

Governing is a political tactic that in practice makes every politcal action about you gaining ground in the next election or your opponents losing ground in the next election. This method prey on every politicians need to be politically relevant essentially their ego and destroys the environment of compromise. In addition many congresspersons most competitive elections are in the primaries where they are punished and penalized by their party peers for working together further damaging incentive to compromise.

One famous example of government by campaign is the patriot act. There were several clauses in the Patriot Act that attacked and meant to weaken what is referred to in this country as big labor that means unions and stuff like that. Now the democratic party main power centers is labor and several key states to democratic strategy are labor controlled. So its vote for a piece of legislation that weakens your constituency or vote against a piece of legislation that at the time was believed to be about the keeping the nation safe.

Most recent evidence of this was the healthcare summit where Obama says to McCain "the campaign is over" well really, not really though. But its this idea that if we can win we will make sure you lose which is why government stalls out. Watch you catch it if your paying attention