Wednesday opinions.
Tom Schaller on Evan Bayh and bipartisanship:
...to which Bayh might complain: Well, if partisan polarization has even poisoned the Senate then no safe haven exists anywhere in American politics for people like him. OK, fair enough. But the notion of a government run based on bi-partisan cooperation among moderates from each party is a fictional fairyland that never existed in the first place, and split-party governance is hardly better. Listening to Bayh wax poetically about the past is like hearing a lecture from your dad (or Bayh's, since his father was senator, too) about how morally superior America was 50 years ago, and then flipping on an episode of Mad Men to see dad's generation drunk by lunch and patting their secretaries' bottoms.
Ruth Marcus: Villager conventional wisdom.
The realist in me watches the fervent Tea Partiers, tugging the Republican Party even further to the right, and the Republican congressional leadership, reaping the short-term rewards of obstruction -- and worries.
"What I think Evan has been trying to communicate is that politics cannot be seen as a zero-sum game where one side wipes the floor with the other side," Wyden told me. Until this happens, he said, "I think you're going to see more good and thoughtful people say that they're going to find other things to do."
Unspoken conclusion? This is bad for both parties and each is equally at fault. Bleh. When will the Villagers have the guts to simply say that one party is openly obstructionist and trying to ruin the system as best they can for political gain? I won't hold my breath.
NY Times Opinionator:
Mort Zuckerman, owner of The New York Daily News and U.S. News and World Report, is said to be pondering a run for the United States Senate from New York. If he makes the transition to politics, The New York Times noted in reporting his ruminations, he will "be following the path of a close friend and fellow media executive, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg."
The Bloomberg–Zuckerman comparison raises a question: If you’re really rich and want to get into politics, are you better off a) having built a media company that makes a lot of money, thus conveying an image of vision and competence; or b) having used money made in real estate to buy media companies that don’t make a lot of money but do provide a place for you to write a column, which then helps you become a ubiquitous multimedia pundit?
Rosebud.
WSJ Review and Outlook:
The political retirement of Evan Bayh, at age 54, is being portrayed by various sages as a result of too much partisanship, or the Senate's dysfunction, or even the systemic breakdown of American governance. Most of this is rationalization. The real story, of which Mr. Bayh's frustration is merely the latest sign, is the failure once again of liberal governance.
How would we possibly know, since we don't have liberal governance? We have at most the same centrist governance Bayh represents, and more to the point the fruition of years of conservative ruin.
Thomas Frank:
How glorious is the tea-party movement? Some talk of its purity of heart, its patriotic spontaneity, and its abundance of republican virtue. To hear others tell it, the movement is but a few steps away from sacred.
After attending the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, the prominent blogger Glenn Reynolds wrote last week in the Washington Examiner that the movement amounted to "America's Third Great Awakening," a massive popular rising against "politicians and parties" that have "grown corrupt, venal and out-of-touch."
How strange, then, that this flowering of populist integrity should have been tended and pruned and succored by a group of Beltway operators known primarily for their venality and insider power.
Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute.
David Harsanyi:
It is true that most reasonable people concede there has been warming on the planet and that most concede they can't possibly fully understand the underlying science. I certainly can't, despite my best efforts.
The problem is that reasonable people also understand economic trade-offs. Many don't like intrusive legislation. Others can sniff out fear-mongering for what it is. Some even trust in humanity's ability to adapt to any changes in climate trends.
In the end, though, the burden of proof is on the believers. And if they're going to ask a nation -- a world -- to fundamentally alter its economy and ask citizens to alter their lifestyles, the believers' credibility and evidence had better be unassailable.
Added:
Steven Pearlstein:
Believe it or not, outside Washington, Americans don't spend much time debating whether there ought to be a public option in the health insurance market, or whether consumer protection should be separated from bank supervision, or whether terrorists ought to be tried in criminal courts or by military tribunals. They expect that such issues will be decided by elected officials who understand their sometimes conflicting values and desires and use good judgment in resolving them.
Viewed in that context, the current political disarray need not be an insurmountable problem for President Obama, but rather could represent a golden opportunity to demonstrate the leadership the country needs and craves.