It's hard to remember sometimes that the White House is situated within the Beltway, too, and its occupants are subject to the same idiocies that the rest of the city believes. One of these foolish sayings is that it is "wrong" for fundamental changes of the sort envisioned here to become law by the vehicle of only one party.
I might accept this view is there were two actual functioning political parties. If, for instance, we were in an era where a Democratic Party controlled Congress was considering the proposals of a president from the same party and, say Senators Javits, Percy and Case expressed difficulty in voting for it; if Governors Rockefeller, Scranton, Romney (the father) thought the bill was unwise as drafted and made suggestions about how to change it, even if Senator Dirksen expressed a concern or too, I would question whether it was such a good idea to force the bill to passage.
We are not in that era, though, even if we wish we were or long for those days where political divisions were sometimes more North and South than Democratic/Republican. Today, North and South IS Democratic/Republican for the most part and there is only one party interested in the whether proposed legislation is a good idea or not. The other party has decided that if the New Deal ushered in 50 years of almost blanket control of Congress, any new New Deal must be resisted at all costs.
Obviously, President Roosevelt worked with a Congress more heavily Democratic than this one, although many of those Democrats were southerners who did not favor social programs, much as they do not do so today, but as part of the Republican Party. When conservative Democrats opposed aspects of the New Deal, President Roosevelt supported others to run against them but, since most of those efforts were unsuccessful, the Official Wisdom of the Beltway Class (even before there actually was a "beltway") was that he ought not to have done that.
I would bet anything that if he could be brought back to life (I have stared hard at his headstone several times, but it has not worked) he would advise anyone who asked to do the same thing. The point is not necessarily to beat faux Democrats such as Ben Nelson (though if Chuck Hagel decided to go back to the Senate by running against him, it would be hard to support Nelson) but to scare them into some level of progressivism.
I am habitually optimistic, even when there is no reason to be so, and there are reasons for hope today which abound.
I even see hope in the sort of FOX sideshow. The attempt to compare FOX to MSNBC is so silly, but so typical of the beltway people, that it is bound to fail and to open eyes up to what they are being fed.
If all FOX did was present two people who saw the news of the day from a conservative point of view, while devoting three hours to spoon fed propaganda from the other side of the political spectrum in the morning, the comparison might hold.
If the two prime time broadcasts invited opposing views onto their programs and allowed them to make their point, before presenting, perhaps, a rebuttal, then the comparison might hold as well.
If Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were using their programs to promote specific events sponsored by the proponents of a single point of view, and that those events were reported reverentially, with hyped up significance during the rest of the broadcast day, then I might understand the comparison.
But they don't, they don't and they don't, so I don't I am habitually optimistic, even when there is no reason to be so, and there are reasons for hope today which abound.
I even see hope in the sort of FOX sideshow. The attempt to compare FOX to MSNBC is so silly, but so typical of the beltway people, that it is bound to fail and to open eyes up to what they are being fed.
If all FOX did was present two people who saw the news of the day from a conservative point of view, while devoting three hours to spoon fed propaganda from the other side of the political spectrum in the morning, the comparison might hold.
If the two prime time broadcasts invited opposing views onto their programs and allowed them to make their point, before presenting, perhaps, a rebuttal, then the comparison might hold as well.
If Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were using their programs to promote specific events sponsored by the proponents of a single point of view, and that those events were reported reverentially, with hyped up significance during the rest of the broadcast day, then I might understand the comparison.
But they don't, they don't and they don't, so I don't. And, hence, this makes no sense to me and is nonsensical beltway equivalency propaganda in its own right.
And, while writing this and watching the Angels forget how to run the bases, I can confess that "They don't, they don't and they don't, so I don't" is my feeble attempt to equal Regina Spektor's "You don't love your girlfriend. And you think that you should, but she thinks that she's fat, but she isn't, but you don't love her anyway", and use this as an excuse to direct you to my finally completed description of a great night at Radio City watching the aforesaid Regina, a week or so ago.