Yuval Levin argues in a Commentary magazine column that we face a constitutional crisis, but not the one you might expect.
[J]udged on a scale of institutional breakdown, the presidency—even this presidency—is not our biggest problem. No, the failures of the Congress both run deeper and are harder to explain. They begin with a simple inability to get much accomplished. Republicans have controlled both Houses of Congress since 2014 and since 2017 have had a president willing to sign more or less anything they send him, but they have mostly been spinning their wheels in frustration.
They pat themselves on the back for cutting the corporate tax rate, a reform that has had bipartisan support for most of this century yet barely happened. And they praise themselves for confirming judges, an act that requires only a simple Senate majority now. But that’s about the sum of it. …
… And the trouble didn’t start in just the past few years. Presidential hyperactivity in recent decades has masked a rising tide of dysfunction—giving us policy action to observe and debate while obscuring the disorder that was overtaking our core constitutional infrastructure. It kept us from facing what should be an unavoidable fact: Congress is broken.
So whether you measure it by legislation, public approval, member satisfaction, even just committee work or each house’s ability to live by its own rules and procedures, the institution looks awfully dysfunctional. And the primary reason for that dysfunction may be the worst news of all: Congress is weak because its members want it to be. And that means the structure of our system, the insights of its framers, and the incentives that shape our politics don’t offer obvious solutions.