It was 21^st-century American politics at its most brazen: A group of Washington politicians and special interests assembled a backroom legislative scheme affecting all Americans, used questionable tactics to implement it, and ignored and antagonized elected lawmakers (including fellow party members) who opposed or questioned it—all in contravention of public opinion. To justify their maneuvers, the schemers doggedly claimed they were acting in the nation’s best interests.

Most people will shake their heads in frustration at the above description. But which group of politicians is it describing, the Republicans who orchestrated the 2013 government quasi-shutdown[1] or the Democrats who crafted the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, better known as “Obamacare”)? In fact, it describes both. Presumably, people disgusted with the behavior of one of those groups are equally disgusted with the other.

The shutdown scheme is now abandoned. Its architects succeeded only in making PPACA less unpopular today than it was before they set their scheme in motion, despite PPACA’s having suffered a humiliating setback in the interregnum. Six weeks ago, some 52 percent of Americans opposed the law.[2] Two weeks later, its insurance “exchanges” debuted in a wave of massive technology failures,[3] incorrect information,[4] questionable security[5] and confusing and cumbersome instructions—with many of those problems resulting from decisions made at the highest levels of the Obama administration.[6] Today, despite government assurances,[7] the exchanges remain a mess[8] and relatively few people are using them to buy insurance. [9] Yet because of the distraction and unsavoriness of the doomed-from-the-start shutdown, PPACA opposition has fallen.[10]

Who says “Tea Party” Republicans want President Obama to fail?

The good news for the shutdown politicians is that most of them hail from safe districts and will return to Washington in the 114^th Congress. They’ll continue to push their agenda. And why shouldn’t they? They’re elected to represent the views of their constituents, and their constituents are highly skeptical of PPACA and many other Obama administration initiatives. Likewise, President Obama and congressional Democrats will push an agenda that their constituencies support.

Fortunately, thanks to the genius of America’s Framers, most of those efforts will fail.

The United States’ 315 citizens hold a wide variety of (mostly noble) values, live in different circumstances, and have highly individual concerns and desires. They operate in a world of uncertainty and limited resources. Small wonder, then, that Americans have so many different ideas and disagreements over how to tackle common problems, and that a good solution for one person is a bad solution for another.

Wise citizens and politicians would appreciate the roots of those disagreements, limit government to addressing problems that are truly public in nature and for which there are consensus solutions, and protect people’s right to try private solutions of their own. But today’s politics don’t work that way. The Framers, in contrast, were wise and crafted American government so that a segment of the public would find it difficult to run political roughshod over another. Hence today’s stalemates and shutdowns, filibusters and partisan animosity, and Tea Parties and Occupy movements. Politicians and commentators lament this “gridlock,” but in a diverse country, gridlock is good.

Nonetheless, it’s the nature of politics and special interests to try to expand government’s reach. Instead of limiting government to truly public matters, today’s politicians concern themselves with whether people buy health insurance and what it covers, who a person marries, and the gas mileage of people’s cars. They believe they should have control over the wages people earn, how much people pay for various goods and services, and how people save for retirement. They think it’s their business what size soda people buy, or whether they use tobacco, or what light bulbs they buy. If you think those examples are far-fetched, consider that there currently are state and/or federal laws on each of them.

So long as government continues expanding into people’s private lives, political gridlock and partisan animosity will continue. That’s something to cheer.

Thomas A. Firey is a senior fellow with the Maryland Public Policy Institute and a Washington County native.