A Very American Enterprise Takes on Divided Government

Last Saturday, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) of Middlebury held a policy conference on divided government.

AEI is a new club at Middlebury based on a public policy think tank in Washington D.C. Thanks to this new voice on campus, students can now tune in to a national network of free political enterprise.

An employee of AEI’s D.C. office, Stan Veuger said, “The company is committed to ideals of freedom and opportunity. We focus on a range of issues: domestic policy and a lot of economic policy.” AEI has come to Middlebury through their campus outreach program, to “bring some more intellectual and political diversity to a lot of debates on campuses that are often more dominated by more aggressive political voices.”

The conference began with a lecture by Professor Shep Melnick of Boston College examining the constitution and divided government, and then featured two panels: one discussing the legislative process and another the legislative agenda of the 114th Congress.

There were appearances by former governor of Vermont Jim Douglass, Political Science department chair Bertram Johnson, Murray Dry and Matthew Dickinson, as well as Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute.

Phil Hoxie ’17.5 and Alexander Khan ’17 organized the event with the help of Dry, who was the faculty sponsor.

Hoxie and Khan “had a desire to organize a club to bring people together; scholars and people who study public policy, to talk about issues of American government,” Dry said.

He mentioned how hard they’d worked to pick panelists and speakers to create an academic and bi-partisan presentation, and was satisfied with the passionate discussion that followed.

When asked what he’d like to see come out of this new club, Hoxie said he saw AEI as a place for the balanced discussion of political issues.

“A real discussion,” he said, “liberal, conservative, doesn’t matter. We want to have a thoughtful, real, articulate, academic discussion on all issues. We picked divided government today because we want to show that our club is non-partisan,” Hoxie said.

“At Middlebury, every political discussion that I’ve experienced has always been very partisan and very politically charged,” Khan said. “I’d rather see a healthy political discussion that allows people to maybe come to realizations about things they hadn’t thought of before.”

Students were particularly impressed with how stimulating the speaker was.

“[The speech by Shep Melnick] was really interesting, it was provocative,” Harry Zieve Cohen ’15 said. “It’s good to hear a different take; someone who doesn’t just reiterate what has become common wisdom and accepted doctrine: that American government doesn’t work and gets nothing done. Its good to have these conversations. We don’t talk in big ways outside of the classroom about our government very often.”

Commenting on the importance of this conference to Middlebury students, Zieve Cohen said, “We care a lot about certain kinds of issues. Environmental issues are an obvious one, and race and poverty have been talked about a lot in the past couple of years.”

“Students don’t quite seem to get that there is a governmental response to these things that they can actually influence, particularly in Vermont,” he continued. “Students should get more involved in the College Democrats, College Republicans and AEI. In America, a lot of politics is local, and here there’s a real opportunity to make a difference.”

Other students thought Melnick raised some interesting points in his speech.

“I really liked his point that divided government is actually a sign that our democracy is working as intended in the Madisonian construct of it,” Peter Dykeman-Birmingham ’18.,5 who attended the event, said.

Some attendees lamented that the panel competed with so many other events and voiced hope that, next time, there would be a better turnout.

There was also some criticism that the panels lacked racial and ethnic diversity, though people were very pleased with the variety of viewpoints represented.

AEI is only just beginning. Their next event is coming up on April 1, featuring Congressman Pallone of New Jersey and Barbara Comstock of Virginia. Mark your calendars and prepare for some invigorating and controversial political conversation.