This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on December 23, 2016 Busi­ness, and in­deed the whole eco­nomy, ap­pre­ci­ate and prosper with sta­bil­ity and pre­dict­ab­il­ity. Wild pen­du­lum swings in policy, wheth­er from left to right or from right to left, are dis­rupt­ive, but they are be­com­ing in­creas­ingly com­mon. Re­pub­lic­ans had a free hand to do what they wanted in 2005 and 2006 when they had the White House as well as Sen­ate and House ma­jor­it­ies. The same was true for Demo­crats in 2009 and 2010. Note that each party paid a price in midterm elec­tions after they gov­erned as they pleased. The ag­gress­ive use of ex­ec­ut­ive and reg­u­lat­ory powers in re­cent years means that even a party just hold­ing the White House can drive policy very strongly in its ideo­lo­gic­al dir­ec­tion. Rules pro­mul­gated by the En­vir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Agency and the Na­tion­al Labor Re­la­tions Board are good ex­amples of that. Now we can ex­pect those policies to be re­versed, with the pen­du­lum swinging as far or fur­ther in the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion. This trend is be­com­ing more ad­vanced than in the past be­cause

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