Daily Times

For a moment, Congress had a chance to act on a policing overhaul, mobilized by a national trauma and overwhelming public support. Those efforts have stalled now and seem unlikely to be revived in an election year.

It´s latest example of how partisanship and polarization on Capitol Hill have hamstrung Congress´ ability to meet the moment and respond meaningfully to public opinion.

Major changes in policing policy appear likely to join gun control and immigration as social issues where even with Americans’ overwhelming support, their elected representatives are unable or unwilling to go along, especially when President Donald Trump is indifferent or opposed.

“In this moment, as it was with gun violence and immigration reform, we don´t know where the president really is,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who weeks ago was expressing skepticism weeks ago about a breakthrough. “If this were the first time we were in this situation, I´d be more hopeful,” he said then.

The bipartisan outcry over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans appeared to be a chance for Congress to reshape its reputation. Polls showed nearly all Americans in a favor of some measure of change to the criminal justice system, and both chambers moved quickly to draft legislation.

There were common elements in the House Democratic proposal and the Senate Republican bill, including a national database of use-of-force incidents by law enforcement and restrictions on police chokeholds. But efforts to bridge the divides bogged down in a predictable fight over process and exposed again how little trust there is between the Senate’s leaders, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

McConnell said Democrats refused to take him at his word that he was willing to negotiate over the final bill, and he pitched a supposedly fair and freewheeling floor debate. Schumer and other Democrats saw little that was genuine in McConnell’s overtures, noting that during his tenure as GOP leader, the sharp-elbowed Kentucky Republican has permitted almost no open floor debate on legislation.

The swift rise and fall of prospects for the police bill showed how lawmakers are often driven more by the views of their parties´ hard-liners than overall public opinion.

“The incentive structure is misaligned for compromise. That´s the reality of it. Members are more likely to be rewarded electorally for representing their base primary voters than for reaching out to voters in the middle,” said Michael Steel, who was a top aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “The giants of yesteryear are remembered as such because voters rewarded them for successfully legislating. And that just seems to be less and less the case.”

Public support for some kind of policing overhaul after Floyd’s death is overwhelming. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows 29% of Americans say the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul, 40% say it needs major changes and 25% say it needs minor changes. There are other high-profile examples where public support has been unable to overcome partisanship in Congress – most notably on gun control.