I thought this was worth more than a passing mention in today's midday open thread:
In his NY Times column today, Paul Krugman writes the following:
Barack Obama recently lamented the fact that "politics has become so bitter and partisan" - which it certainly has.
But he then went on to say that partisanship is why "we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that's what we have to change first." Um, no. If history is any guide, what we need are political leaders willing to tackle the big problems despite bitter partisan opposition. If all goes well, we'll eventually have a new era of bipartisanship - but that will be the end of the story, not the beginning.
Or to put it another way: what we need now is another F.D.R., not another Dwight Eisenhower....
It was only after F.D.R. had created a more equal society, and the old class warriors of the G.O.P. were replaced by "modern Republicans" who accepted the New Deal, that bipartisanship began to prevail.
Of course, this rapidly expanding income inequality is exactly what Jim Webb touched on Tuesday and the theme John Edwards has been running on for 5 years now, so some important Democrats really do "get" it.
Blogger "Big Tent Democrat" explains (in a post from over 6 months ago) the problem with politicians like Obama who don't get it and peddle this "why can't we just get along" malarky:
FDR's lesson for Obama [is] Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle. . . . FDR governed as a liberal but politicked like a populist....
In a follow-up post today, Big Tent quotes blogger Brad Delong's own thoughts on a discussion with Paul Krugman:
Krugman goes on to argue that we are in a similar era to that which proceeded the New Deal and that similar politics (and policies) to FDR's is what is needed to change our reality of accelerated income inequality and all the ills that come with it.
while I [Delong] am profoundly, profoundly disappointed and disgusted by the surrender of the reality-based wing of the Republican policy community to the gang of Republican political spivs who currently hold the levers of power, I do think that there is hope that they will come to their senses and that building pragmatic technocratic policy coalitions from the center outward will be possible and is our best chance.
Paul, I think, believes otherwise: The events of the past decade and a half have convinced him, I think, that people like me are hopelessly naive, and that the Democratic coalition is the only place where reality-based discourse is possible. Thus, in his view, the best road forward to (a) make the Democratic coalition politically dominant through aggressive populism, and then (b) to argue for pragmatic reality-based technocratic rather than idealistic fantasy-based ideological policies within the Democratic coalition.
He may well be right.
As Big Tent notes, today's Krugman column explains exactly why he is right. Those who have TimesSelect, should read the whole thing (linked above). If the full column is posted on a free site in the future (I checked Truthout but it was not there) I will update this diary with a link.
(For those in Illinois, a similar version of this diary is now on the front page of Prairie State Blue.)