🧵 The conversation surrounding this is confused in ways that really backfire. For example, you often hear that the Founders more or less "wanted gridlock to be the norm," for it to be "hard to get anything done," to guard against radical change.

Naturally, this tends to lessen the public's respect for the whole system. It doesn't sound very attractive, or at least sounds like a particularly inefficient way of guarding against radical change. "They wanted to force compromise," is better, but also backfires.

It confuses the public into being mad that everyone "can't just get a long and compromise," like it's a matter of personal attitudes and conflict is a sign something is wrong. A more invigorating and accurate framing:

We've basically inverted this framing into something very demoralizing. "Congress isn't supposed to do anything," rather than "Congress is gunning for a showdown." And we're so confused that one of the impeachment charges against Trump was "Obstruction of Congress."

The point is that the branches were supposed to be actively tactical, and were given a set of tools to use against each other. Not "do nothing."