Texas Senator Ted Cruz set off a media firestorm last week by becoming the first to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2016. The media has generally described Cruz as a passionate, hard-line conservative and a polarizing figure. Writing for Fox News, Michael Goodwin argued that Cruz has a chance at becoming our next president, calling him “a brilliant man of clear conservative convictions, not muddled by the politics of calculation.” It’s a nice sentiment, but it also effectively illustrates the underlying problem with candidates like Cruz and with our political system in general: being “muddled” by a willingness to compromise is actually a trait we should pursue in a potential president, not vilify. Working on the problems we face as a nation requires considerable “calculation,” or reasoned, pragmatic solutions. What we don’t need is more blanket ideology, no matter how passionate. 

In light of the government shutdown of 2013, it’s been made clear that the blatantly dysfunctional nature of Congress is a serious issue. The 112th and 113th congressional sessions, our last two congresses, have been the two least productive—in terms of bills passed—in American history and scored the lowest approval ratings since 1974, according to NBC. Political polarization lies at the root of this dysfunction, because as politicians move further and further away from each other, they lose their ability to find any reasonable middle ground. This undermines our democratic process by eliminating our ability to work together to find solutions to the problems we face. As a senator, Ted Cruz epitomizes the polarization of Congress in his inability to compromise; the junior senator has passed just one bill so far, a unanimously supported, non-controversial effort to stop Iran’s envoy from entering the US. 

Possibly our biggest concern in 2008 was health care. A 2009 study from Harvard University found that 45,000 people died every year from lack of access to health care, and those who had no health insurance were 40 percent more likely to die of preventable causes. In response to this awful scenario, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, making health insurance affordable for low-income earners and closing loopholes that allowed health insurance companies to deny coverage. Obamacare was initially a compromise; far more moderate than the single-payer system President Barack Obama championed in 2008, it most closely resembled the health care system put in place by Republican Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. As a system that mandates minimum health insurance coverage and subsidizes it for low-income earners, Obamacare is ironically similar to the plan put forward by Senator John McCain during the 2008 election. But compromises that could potentially save thousands of lives don’t fit neatly within the confines of Ted Cruz’s far-right ideology; Cruz championed the conservative pushback against Obamacare, filibustering its passage and shutting down the government in an attempt to defund the bill. Since then, Cruz has promised to “repeal every word of Obamacare,” bringing us back to the reality of 2008, when health and life expectancy were a matter of finances. 

Perhaps most disconcerting about the stubborn nature of U.S. politics is our inability to act in the best interests of the country. Following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a shooter used a legally-purchased gun to kill 20 school children and six adult staff members, a bipartisan coalition of senators proposed legislation that would limit the number of bullets that can be held by a magazine and extend universal background checks to keep assault weapons from potentially dangerous individuals. Cruz, along with all but four senate Republicans and most southern Democrats, opposed all measures to reduce gun violence, with Cruz arguing that the Obama administration tried to use the shooting as “an excuse to go after the constitutional rights of law-abiding senators” and has continued to urge Republicans not to compromise on the issue. Before the vote, polls showed overwhelming support for universal background checks, including 92 percent of gun owners and 86 percent of Republicans supporting the bill. This was an opportune moment for politicians to answer their constituencies bring about meaningful change in public policy and hopefully reduce gun violence in the process. But Cruz is not motivated by a desire to lower the murder rate or decrease the number of mass murders; rather, he is motivated to protect his exact ideology down to the letter, regardless of its effect on the lives of Americans. This is unproductive, harmful politics and the diametric opposite of what we need in 2016. 

There’s no doubt that liberals are also at fault for some of our political polarization. Liberal politicians can be just as unwilling to compromise as conservatives, and our twitterization of social politics has eroded conversations down to slogans. But Ted Cruz stands out as a particularly dangerous politician, the type to give ideological objections to pragmatic solutions and shut down our government rather than compromise on health care. 

When the time comes to pick a candidate for the 2016 election, I hope Democrats won’t merely endorse a liberal version of Ted Cruz in the future but will instead put forth a candidate who will fight arguments of shallow passion with arguments of substance. 

Despite our stagnant Congress, we’ve made some significant progress over the past eight years, bringing health care to millions of uninsured and cutting unemployment nearly in half. However, over 10,000 Americans continue to die from gun violence every year, and millions of Americans continue working full-time while requiring government assistance to live. The biggest challenge for our next president will be to build upon our successes while working to break down the polarization of Congress so we can move toward a more productive future and address those issues we still face. 

As a senator, and now as a candidate, Cruz represents an undoing of all the progress we’ve made over the last eight years and a continued barricade to progress and compromise. In other words, Cruz embodies everything wrong with American politics in 2015 and should be ignored as a potential candidate.