What the country got, of course, in the presidential campaign that followed, was essentially a series of debates on a single topic: “Resolved, my opponent is a skunk and a crook and should be in jail,” with Donald Trump voicing the affirmative. That was when the GOP candidate wasn’t expounding on his opponent’s supposed physical infirmities or mocking just about anyone who opposed him, often in crude and dishonest tweets or rally rants. Hillary Clinton was considerably more conventional and dignified as a campaigner (the bar was awfully low), but she had little to say about world trade and its complications other than to promise (unwisely) to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership she had once praised.

The rancor has continued, stoked by a president who seems to think it useful for advancing his own fortunes. It should be clear by now — as he pursues an odd, tortuous path toward his holy grail of victory over our trading partners and a host of enemies, real and imagined — that without some dramatic changes in the governing order, nothing useful is going to get done on many of our real long-term challenges, the ones that go far beyond current ups and downs in the economy. We mean such things as providing effective relief for those hurt by global trade, seeking ways to get control of old-age spending, facing squarely the reality of climate change, considering new ideas on education, training and productivity that better serve the workforce and the economy, and dealing rationally with immigration in a future that will see our population aging and perhaps declining.

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There is more — the list is not endless, but it’s pretty long, and the majorities in this thoroughly humbled Congress seem capable of little more than fearful obedience to an erratic and unstable president, while the opposition struggles to get its footing and often shows little inclination to raise hard questions that might disturb its own constituencies.

In his final address to the Senate last summer, John McCain issued a challenge to his fellow members that should be heeded as well by members of the House and, most of all, by the voters who will elect them in November: “We are an important check on the powers of the executive,” he said. “Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the president’s subordinates. We are his equal!”

With that, the senator from Arizona stated succinctly — and with an exclamation point — the obligation before us this Labor Day and in the weeks to come: to choose legislators who will do what the Founding Fathers expected of them.

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