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Penn Pres Amy Gutman's mind-numbing Times op-ed
It's not clear why the New York Times feels compelled to offer op-ed space to purveyors of the punditocracy's conventional wisdom when it has so many on staff.
Penn Pres Amy Gutman's mind-numbing Times op-ed
It's not clear why the New York Times feels compelled to offer op-ed space to purveyors of the punditocracy's conventional wisdom when it has so many—like Bill Keller, Thomas Friedman, and David Brooks—on staff. Today, University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutman and Harvard professor of government Dennis Thompson spent nearly 800 words reiterating the every-day-more cliched and plain wrong idea that Washington is 'broken' because 'both sides' 'fail to compromise':
The exercise proved that the capital is caught in a centrifuge that allows those with an uncompromising mind-set to chase the tantalizing partisan dream: My party will gain control, and push through its agenda, undiluted. This is a fantasy. It is highly unlikely that one party will gain complete control. It would have to secure the 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, and it would still face the task of making compromises within its own ranks.
What enabled the uncompromising mind-set to dominate our politics? We live in the era of the permanent campaign, and the uncompromising approach is designed for campaigning: voters are inspired by high-flying promises never to give in on their favorite causes, while the news media thrive on low-lying attacks, endlessly repeated even (or especially) if they are mendacious.
While some of this about the effect of the media-campaign industrial complex might be somewhat true, the idea that this at the root of our nation's political and economic problems is patently false.
From the debt ceiling, to healthcare reform to the supercommittee, Democrats have not only compromised, they've tended to straight up sell out progressive policies such as the public option for health insurance (let alone single-payer healthcare). The Tea Party-infused GOP, on the other hand, proposes to close the deficit (during a major recession) exclusively through cutting programs that help poor and middle class people.
The problem isn't a failure to compromise. The problem is that our government is controlled by people beholden to wealthy corporate interests and/or complete free-market ideologues. Democrats consistently offer mostly cuts with some tax increases on the wealthy, but they won't be praised as bipartisan, I suppose, unless they agree to privatize Medicare.
The perspective of the regular Americans who are getting their butts kicked every day, now known as the 99%, rarely gets a hearing.
Paul Krugman, writing in the same pages, captured Gutman's non-reality based perspective:
If and when the supercommittee fails, virtually all news reports will be he-said, she-said, quoting Democrats who blame Republicans and vice versa without ever explaining the truth.
Oh, and let me give a special shout-out to “centrist” pundits who won’t admit that President Obama has already given them what they want. The dialogue seems to go like this. Pundit: “Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?” Mr. Obama: “I support a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes.” Pundit: “Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?”
You see, admitting that one side is willing to make concessions, while the other isn’t, would tarnish one’s centrist credentials. And the result is that the G.O.P. pays no price for refusing to give an inch.
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