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  • Variations on the Theme of Divided Government
  • F. S. Naiden (bio)

The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite,That ever I was born to set it right!

- Hamlet

That uniquely American phenomenon, "divided government," won the elections of 2012. The Democrats kept the presidency and the Senate and called that a win, while Republicans called it a tie, because they kept the House. Each side consoled itself with the thought that divided government is unavoidable, if only because the federal government has three branches and a bicameral legislature.

The state governments are mostly divided, too. Thirty governors are Republican, and so are twenty-seven legislatures, but a little less than half the states are Republican both ways.1 At last count (October 2012), 56% of federal judges in courts of general jurisdiction were appointees of Republican presidents, yet Democrats have occupied the presidency most of the last twenty years.2 Many state judges are elected in non-partisan elections, and so state courts are harder to characterize, but seven diverse states hold partisan elections for their highest courts (Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia). Seventy-five percent of these judges are now Republicans, far better than the Republican showing in the legislatures in these states.3

Yet this supposedly unavoidable division of power is a recent phenomenon, resulting from the development of presidential authority during and after the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Before that time, there was some division of spoils, but not the impasse of today. During the first forty years of the federal government, both houses of Congress were never controlled by the party opposing the president. Then, in 1827, President John Quincy Adams tangled with a congressional majority of Jacksonian Democrats. At the next election, Jackson drove Adams from power, and the Democrats retained control of Congress as well. During the rest of the 19th century, a split between the president and both houses of Congress occurred only six times.4

In the first half of the 20th century Woodrow Wilson endured a Republican Congress from 1918-1920, and Harry Truman endured the same thing from 1946-48. Two years later, the voters put one party in charge of the White House and Capitol Hill. The voters were fickle, and they were not always tidy, but they were decisive.


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Clifford Berryman, "Another Such Victory and I'm Undone!" November 9, 1922. From the U.S. Senate Collection, Center for Legislative Archives.

A split between the president and the Senate on one side, and the House on the other, occurred for a total of just twenty years prior to 1945. George Washington, the first unlucky president, suffered an opposition House for two years out of eight. That didn't happen again for about fifty years. Then came half a dozen cases of two years each in the rest of the 19th century.5 In the early 20th century William Howard Taft faced the same situation as Washington. From 1918-1920, it was Woodrow Wilson's turn. Then came Herbert Hoover's turn.6 He was heading toward repudiation in the next election. All these presidents were—not just Hoover, but Taft and also the little-remembered John Tyler, James K. Polk, Chester Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison. Out they went, and their party with them.7 Confronted with divided government, the voters got rid of it.

One more kind of split rounds out the list of constitutional possibilities—the president and the House on the same side, and the Senate controlled by the opposition party. Before 1945, it happened for just eight years.8

Before 1945, government was divided about a quarter of the time. Since 1945, government has been divided most of the time. Eisenhower faced an opposition Congress for six of his eight years as president, Nixon and Ford faced one for all eight years of their two terms, and Reagan faced an opposition House for all eight years. Then it was George Bush's turn: Democrats in the House, Democrats in the Senate. Once the Cold War ended, divided government became more frequent. Clinton suffered as long as Eisenhower. George W. Bush...

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