>I am claiming that today's level of gridlock was neither intended by the founders ... nor healthy for our country...

That's fair.

But first a step back. I think the real weak link in the HN culture is to be at its best, we must thoughtfully compose HN comments. The more nuanced and deep the subject matter, the more time it takes to compose thoughtful, valuable content, and the longer that composition must be, often being an essay on its own. That's time taken from the rest of our lives. I'm as guilty as anyone, more guilty than some, of attempting to pack more meaning into less time with pithy, succinct replies. Of course this tactic is counterproductive and only diminishes the conversation.

To your point: at the time or our nation's founding, there was only one social question in the political realm, slavery. Yes, there was also demagoguing about the Revolutionary War debt, and taxing distilled spirits affected some socio-economic groups more than others, but by and large the People expected the Federal government to decide matters of State, war and peace, Indian affairs, tariffs, and (most importantly) any legislation requiring expenditure also made provisions for meeting the expenditure.

Freedom of the Press literally meant 18th century movable type. Jefferson was free to concoct lies about Hamilton behind the cloak of anonymity, but it took some time to spread, and Congress, by and large, could deliberate at its leisure the few affairs in actually had to decide.

Gradually (after the overriding social affair in politics blew-up into the Civil War) more social questions came into political consideration: womens' suffrage, the ten, then eight-hour work day, worker safety, product safety, civil rights...much of these social improvements held to be either under the umbrella of the regulating commerce clause, or the 14th Amendment.

Then some really big changes crept in, almost unnoticed. First the income tax, which was sold as only applying to the ultra-rich. In very short order it applied to everyone, and eventually in a crafty accounting trick it became a withholding tax instead of a tax you have to go through the pain of paying. Just as significantly, sometime around WWI (if I recall correctly) Congress changed the rules so all expenditures roll-up into one (or a handful, I'm fuzzy on exactly how it works) appropriations bill. Now Congress is free to pass out social goods without paying for them.

The evolution from the hassle of movable type to the 24-hour always on news cycle does not need elaboration, but I will observe that frequently the info-tainment industry couches every emotion-laden problem imaginable in terms of the the government must/should/can do something about this.

So now we live in an age where every conceivable issue can be considered for legislation, and always-on sources of information/propaganda compete for the public's, the beurocrat's, and the legislature's attention. So is it really a good idea to ramrod every item the legislature considers through on a 51-49 vote? Tomorrow the count could easily be reversed. There's often emotional appeal made to social legislation of the past (worker safety, civil rights, etc.) and that not going forward with whatever social legislation beign considered today will somehow reverse all the good accomplished in the past, but I submit that on the margin, the increase in good achieved by these past examples was great. When there is no limit to what can be considered by the legislature, then many things will come up for which the realistic increase of good on the margin is small...and the unintended cosequensces are unknown.