Intensity, Geography, and Time: Three Controversies Indexed by Major Repeal Drives

We consider three American policy controversies that have entailed memorable drives to repeal congressional measures. Those drives have targeted the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), Section 14b of the Taft–Hartley Act, and the Affordable Care Act. We do not consider the actual conduct of these repeal drives. We consider the overall policy controversies in which the drives have figured. Components of this focus include factors related to political geography, Congress’s deliberative content and style, the U.S. system of vertical federalism, the U.S. system of elections, the role of crises, and the consequences of conflict. One line of takeaway is the following. In each of these three policy enterprises, we see a kind of controversy in which extreme intensity has joined with striking geographic differentiation in views. As a practical matter, the policymaking process in these cases has enrolled a multiplicity of actors, including the states as well as the public, and it has extended across time. All this activity has arguably constituted the policymaking process. In these instances, this is how the country has been making certain of its major decisions—jaggedly and extendedly. A congressional enactment can be just a first draft.