In the Senate, both parties—and particularly Republicans until last year—have used the filibuster more frequently than ever before to stall legislation and presidential appointments. This has led to calls to either reform the filibuster or scrap it entirely as a way to speed up the legislative process and make it easier for Congress to reflect the will of the people. In 2013, Democrats did change the rules to make it easier to confirm executive and judicial appointees (below the Supreme Court), and Republicans didn’t bother to reverse those changes when they took control last year.

Yet for all of the consternation, if you are a Democrat, Congress functioned quite well in the first two years of Obama’s term. The House and Senate passed so much significant legislation—the stimulus bill, health care, student loans, and Wall Street reform—that the White House and congressional Democrats had trouble explaining it all to voters. Then came the Tea Party wave of 2010, and the American people elected a Republican House to serve as a check on the Obama administration. It’s only natural that divided government would lead to some gridlock, because Congress was designed to only pass laws if there is a consensus in favor of them—especially in the Senate, which was created as a check on the inflamed passions that would lead to political overreactions by the House.

So if you don’t like how Congress is working, blame the Founders—which is exactly what my colleague Yoni Appelbaum did last year, when he wrote that the gridlock on display in recent years may be “a product of flaws inherent” in the Constitution’s design.

ANSWER

Sure, but the Founders never imagined that partisan gerrymandering would render the House of Representatives so polarized that most lawmakers now fear a primary challenge from the right or left more than they fear losing to the other party in a general election. They have no incentive to compromise. We need non-partisan redistricting commissions to redraw the lines and make House members more accountable to people other than the extremes of each party.

QUESTION

Well, the Founders never imagined political parties at all—but that doesn’t mean the system can’t work. Is redistricting reform possible, and would redrawing House districts help reduce polarization?

The 435 congressional districts are redrawn every 10 years after the Census, and historically, it has been the purview of state legislatures to determine the districts in their state. Naturally, the party in power tends to draw them to maximize its advantage, a process that over time has resulted in some totally ridiculous-looking districts that stretch horizontally or diagonally across states, or connect two population centers with a strip as thin as a single road. The Washington Post did a good rundown of the most oddly-shaped districts in 2014.