Is politics more than just opposition?

Comment published in New York Times online, February 13, 2018, “The End of the Two-Party System,” by David Brooks, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/opinion/trump-republicans-scarcity.html?comments#commentsContainer (1 “recommend”):

Yes. The intrinsic problem of our political system is the same as that of our legal system: It is intrinsically adversarial, but it needs to also be what French philosopher Alain Badiou calls a "truth procedure." The fact that ours is a two-party system rather than a multi-party one surely contributes to that, as does the essentially personal and ad hominem character that political discourse in this country all too easily winds up having. We normally vote for politicians whom we think will do things we like, but they, and often the more partisan among us, want more than anything to win, perhaps at any cost. 

Trump's presidency marks the triumph of a politics that is merely about governing over one that is about anything substantive. His entire rhetoric is not just authoritarian but performative, and so largely removed from any substantive discourse. This should indicate to left-liberals the need for imaginative proposals and not just angry opposition. Failure at this will consolidate the defeat of real democracy that is the meaning of Trump's triumph. 

What Brooks calls abundance versus scarcity and thinks of as mentalities might also be thought of as the need for any politics worth its salt to make clear not only what it is against but also what it is for. Any meaningful politics will have a keen sense of both. But when opposition triumphs over vision, anger and cynicism join hands.