[This new version of WordPress the "insert media" function does not work. Sorry no illustrations until that gets fixed.]
Man – National Review Online was just swimming with powerful articles this morning. Where to start?
Charles Krauthammer on whether America truly is “ungovernable”. How much have we heard lately about how the “system” is broken? How the federal government is “structurally dysfunctional”?
He reminds us of which recent presidents were quite able to govern and get stuff done even when Congress was controlled by the opposition party.
It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills, and an ideological compass in tune with the public’s, the country was indeed governable.
Read the whole thing at National Review Online. Krauthammer could also have mentioned George W. Bush and such legislation as “No Child Left Behind” and the Medicare prescription coverage (whether one cares for those two pieces of legislation or not). The Senate is not broken. America is not ungovernable. The problem is not the system. The problem is poor leadership. The system is working perfectly fine.
I also have (such as when listening to National Public Radio) lately heard much kvetching about filibusters and cloture. We cannot believe 41 senators can stop the government! There are two problems with recent calls from the left to change the Senate rules.
The first is the hypocrisy. There are some who defended filibusters when George W. Bush was in office who now call for ending them.
The second is the danger. There are some who call for ending filibusters (or changing the rules for cloture) that no doubt would sing a different tune if the Republicans were in charge and wanted to do something like oh I don’t know privatize Social Security.
(And while we are it note that on other occasions the president brags about how much he and the Congress have accomplished. Look at all the acts that have passed! The only time he complains about how the “system is not working” is when he is talking about the one thing that matters more to him than anything else that he just cannot seem to get. Radically restructuring one sixth of the American economy.)
One of the things that frosts my mug is people who keep changing the rules to suit themselves. And who want to have their cake and eat it too.
Check out also the delightful “Pick an Excuse, Any Excuse” by Jonah Goldberg. During the last few months he has become one of my favorite commentators. One thing that stands out about him is his sense of fairness. He often defends or gives credit to the “opposition” when appropriate. Not one of those “we are always right and they are always wrong” people.
In a nutshell his article explores how when you listen to Democrats these days none of their problems are their fault. Oh wait. One thing is their fault. They have failed to communicate clearly enough to the American people.
That sounds reasonable doesn’t it? “If we just explain what we want to do well enough then everyone will support these policies”. But think about it that for a moment. These people who are so educated and brilliant that they know what is best for us do not know how to explain something adequately.
Well, that’s not entirely right. The Obama administration admits one mistake — and one mistake only. It didn’t explain itself better. In both his State of the Union address
and interviews, Obama insisted he got all the policies right. It’s just that the reportedly greatest orator in the history of the republic couldn’t quite make himself clear enough.
Read the whole thing at National Review Online. This is similar to the constant “the reason everything is still so awful despite the trillions we have spend is the mess Bush left us”. Which again sounds reasonable. But as Anglican Curmudgeon pointed out a while back implies that they are completely unable to make any difference. “Elect us so we can fix this mess”. And later “the mess is not fixed because someone else made it”.
Speaking of mugs and frost. Why devote space on this website to discuss this? Because as mentioned before one of my “buttons” is when people insult my intelligence. When they say things so stupid so lame so contradictory so contrary to logic and fact and they think I am stupid enough to buy it.
Oh yes. Speaking of. That is precisely what many liberals think. We are we resisting the Obamessiah? We are we resisting a radical restructuring of the American economy? Why we are resisting radical changes to the relationship between the American people and their government? Because we are stupid.
But even this explanation amounts to dodging blame. It’s still code for “you stupid Americans, why can’t you understand I’m right and you’re wrong?”
That’s certainly how Joe Klein, Obama’s de facto press flack at Time magazine, sees things. In a piece titled “Too Dumb to Thrive,” Klein argues that Americans are too stupid to understand how totally awesome the stimulus was. (Time’s Peter Beinart makes a similar argument in a debate with me for Bloggingheads.tv.) What’s funny about this is that if nearly two-thirds of Americans are idiots, that means roughly half of Obama’s voters were idiots, too. His election was once the epitome of American wisdom. Now it seems he was elected despite the stupidity of his supporters.
Some adamantly refuse to accept the possibility that we do get it. The problem is that we do not want it. And the “you are too stupid to realize that what we are doing is for your own good” line may reveal the quintessence of what some call “progressivism”.
