Election night is over.
We’ve all seen the news, and whether or not we’re happy with the results, it’s time to move on, drink all the tea we can get and try to look forward to where we go from here.
Florida Senator-elect Marco Rubio and our new Speaker of the House John Boehner got it right in their postelection speeches.
The election results are a message that Americans are worried about the way the government is heading. This is why people have decided to give Republicans a second chance to lead — a second chance to do what they were supposed to do not too long ago.
But here’s the tricky part, Gators. If Republicans go back to acting the way they did before 2008 and don’t deliver on the promises they made on the campaign trail, then it’ll only be two years until the next elections see sweeping partisan reform.
This country is headed in the wrong direction, and it’s clear neither party can fix anything on its own. From here it’s obvious both parties need to work together if America is going to go back to being the greatest country this side of Rome. Republicans in the House and Senate are going to need to be able to work with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama to accomplish what needs to be done.
Thankfully, both Boehner and Obama seemed to understand this during their respective postelection speeches.
We’ll be able to see if the president and Congress can put our money where their mouths are when it comes time for the president to submit his budget to Congress. If the two parties are able to come together to avoid putting the government in a temporary lockdown and form a bipartisan Team America, then we’re in business.
Now, I know a lot of people are running around worrying about the government not being able to get anything accomplished during these two years with a split-party government, but there’s still hope.
Assuming we aren’t living in a “Matrix”-inspired world, our existence proves the world didn’t end with the split government in the Clinton administration or Reagan’s midterm split.
Things didn’t go completely downhill, but rather, our country flourished following these past partisan splits.
During the ‘90s, we actually had a federal budget surplus, the first since 1969. Having Republicans in control of the Congress forced Clinton to negotiate with Congressional leaders to get anything done, something he did very successfully. This negotiation forced our government to become far more moderate, and we can see in retrospect our country as a whole was far greater during that time.
However, Clinton was far more moderate of a Democrat than Obama is and tea partiers have made the Republican Party more conservative than ever before. But if either want this country to succeed, they’ll need to be willing to work together like the Republicans and Democrats of the late ‘90s did.
Let’s get to work, America.
Chris Dodson is a first-year finance and journalism student. His column appears every Monday.
