When it comes to politics, at least, there is an odd sense of "win at all costs" that seems to be coming from the White House these days. A recent instance that leaps to mind (but merely one from a wide variety of available examples): the issue with wiretapping conversations between persons in the US and persons overseas who may have ties to terrorist organizations. The White House had the ability to execute such a program as long as it received the blessing of a secret court managed by the judicial branch of the government. Instead, the White House allegedly chose to circumvent this check / balance, and initiated the wiretapping without seeking this consent.

When confronted about this, the White House and/or its supporters appear to have put pressure on Republican members of Congress to pass a new law that codifies this new behavior as legal -- effectively short circuiting any possibility that the White House acted illegally.

Now, this is a rather over-simplified summation of events, and the story is far from over. However, this kind of scenario keeps playing itself out, and it poses a question that I find problematic:

Do these Republicans not realize that the checks and balances that they remove today because they are inconvenient will continue to be absent tomorrow when the Democrats eventually take back the White House and/or the legislature?

Not too long ago, when the Republicans were concerned that the Democrats might successfully filibuster the President's nominee(s) to the Supreme Court, some members of the ruling party suggested that they might exercise "the nuclear option" of removing the ability to filibuster. Did they not realize that, had they done so, the filibuster would no longer be available to *them* when it is once again the Republicans' turn to serve as the loyal opposition?

If one wants to enjoy the maximum benefit of winning the game for the longest amount of time possible, one must occasionally allow for strategic losses. It would be better to fight a filibuster today than to lose that potential tool forever in the future -- a tool that the Republicans have used quite effectively when they have been the minority party in Congress.

The Republicans may well continue to hold majority power in both houses of the legislature for another two to four decades. They may also lose it later this year. As long as the US remains a democracy, the Republicans can rest assured that someday they will be unseated in the White House, someday they will lose the majority in Congress, and someday they will not hold as much sway in the Supreme Court as they currently enjoy. In order to enjoy their current position of power, they are well advised to employ all political tools at their disposal to accomplish their goals -- but not at the expense of dismantling the checks and balances that keep our democracy robust.

Sure, those pesky checks and balances may seem inconvenient when you want to push through your legislative agenda, but you'll miss them later when you need them. If the Republicans felt the Democrats were ruthless during their forty years of political dominance in the latter half of the twentieth century, how much less ruth will the Democrats show during their next period of dominance, unfettered by those same checks and balances that the Republicans currently seem to be dismantling?