I was reading A Different Democracy (OK, I'm still reading it; it's a slog), and the authors made the point that legislating in a presidential system is, by definition, transactional. Here's what that means.
In most parliamentary systems, the prime minister has his or her job, because they control a majority of the votes in parliament. If they didn't, they wouldn't be prime minister. Even if it requires a coalition, they can command a majority, otherwise they aren't prime minister. If the PM brings a major piece of legislation to the floor of the parliament and it fails, there will be snap elections, which could damage the party or parties in a coalition.
In other words, the PM can command her party members in the parliament via the threat of having elections that could cost people their seats. What's more, the party usually determines who gets to run for seats. If you're Krysten Sinema in a parliamentary system, you are bounced from the ballot by the party leadership, and your seat will be contested by someone less intractable.
In a presidential system, Congress is elected independently (if occasionally concurrently) of the president. This is why Joe Biden can win less than 30% of the vote in West Virginia, but Joe Manchin can win a Senate seat there.
Every bill a president wants passed into law must be negotiated with everyone who holds a veto point in the process: committee chairs, majority leaders, and now Manchinema. Republicans don't have to worry about this because they have no ideas or plans about how to run the country beyond cut taxes and roll back regulations.
So, when Democrats want to pass a major bill like BBB or ACA, they have negotiate their way through those veto points. Those are transactional. In 2009, people pitched a fit about the "Cornhusker Kickback" for Nebraska negotiated by Ben Nelson, an actual Democrat from Nebraska. In return for voting for ACA, he got some special carve outs for his home state and people freaked out.
Why?
Congress has broken down precisely because it is no longer nakedly transactional. Ideally, Joe Manchin would demand a huge jobs program to rehabilitate old coal mines to be carbon sequestration vaults. Since we can't sequester carbon in large quantities yet, this would be an obvious boondoggle.
Who cares?
(I have no idea what Sinema would want.)
Everyone seems to think that some bizarre fealty to an abstract standard is more important to getting things done. Giving West Virginia or Arizona some special perks should absolutely be part of Manchinema's strategy.
As it is, they have no strategy. That's just dumb.
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