There’s been a lot of criticism of my column at CNN.com about the breakdown of Congress since 1980.
I’ll deal shortly with criticisms from Bruce Bartlett, Matt Yglesias, and Kevin Drum.
Let me deal first with a criticism from the right-hand side of the blogosphere, epitomized by this from Erick Erickson of RedState:
Maybe, just maybe there is a different reason Congress has done little since the seventies. Maybe, just maybe it could be because conservatives largely took over in the 80’s through Republican controlled White Houses or Congresses and conservatives tend to think we don’t need sweeping legislation to solve all the ills of the American people.
Isn’t this the quintessential vanity piece of liberal drivel? Those elites back in the 50s to the 70s could get great things done because they didn’t have to interact with the people. But once they were forced to interact with those C-SPAN cameras, they couldn’t solve all the problems the American people never knew they had.
If it were possible for two paragraphs to sum up everything that is wrong with the American conservative movement, these are them.
The total indifference to policy and governance – the glib equation of ideological activists with “the people” – the assumption that conservatives just needed to “take over” and then all problems would spontaneously disappear …. it’s all on display.
The suggestion that conservatives don’t need to legislate – or anyway don’t need to legislate anything much – is ignorant of history, ignorant of policy, ignorant of government.
To their critics, the deregulation of oil and gas in the 1970s was “sweeping.” Ditto the deregulation of air, trucking and rail. Ditto the Reagan tax cuts. Ditto welfare reform.
The problems ahead for conservatives will require even bigger action still.
Do you want to balance the budget? You can’t do it without curbing the growth of Medicare and Medicaid, and that will take major reforms in both programs.
How about a shift from unskilled to more skilled immigration? Not a small project.
Concerned to protect the environment while enhancing U.S. energy security? That too will require legislation that some would call sweeping.
On the other hand:
If for you “limited government” is a slogan rather than a political project -
If you are less eager to fix problems than to complain about them -
If you see politics not as a search for agreed solutions, but as a theater for cultural clash:
Then who cares whether Congress functions well or not? Your politics is about electioneering, not governance – about grievance, not responsibility.
sinz54 // Mar 3, 2010 at 10:08 am
DavidWelker:
I’m going to repeat my point one more time for you,
so you can understand it:
The Department of Energy oversees a vast empire of regulation of ALL of America’s energy production and distribution.
Managing the nuclear weapons stockpile is a small part of that.
The fact that the DoE manages the nuclear weapons stockpile well is irrelevant, since it was always managed well no matter which agency was in charge of it. (At least three other agencies had been in charge of it before the DoE was created.)
We don’t need a DoE to manage America’s energy mix. Let the free market take care of it. If solar and wind power can succeed without hamstringing every other type of energy by regulations and bureaucracy, then I’ll be all for it.
Here’s a clue: What percentage of the DoE’s budget goes for managing the nuclear weapons stockpile? And where does the REST of the money go?
sinz54 // Mar 3, 2010 at 10:16 am
DavidWelker:
You should talk.
One reason our politics has become so dysfunctional is because of leftists like YOU.
Yes, YOU.
Starting in the 1960s, I watched how you leftists dirtied and ruined America’s public discourse, by making boorishness, rowdiness, personal attacks, and sheer obscenity, into political tools. Speakers at public meetings were heckled off the stage or had pies or rotten fruit thrown at them, destroying their right to speak and their audience to listen. Filth and obscenity, repeated loudly and often enough, replaced real debate. Obscene “discussions” about the personal habits of LBJ’s daughters became a replacement for real debate about the way forward in the Vietnam War. Contempt and hatred replaced sincere disagreement.
And you leftists DID IT. It was deliberate. And calculated.
I have tried to have a civil discussion with you.
I have NEVER attacked you personally.
Yet from you, and from your left-wing predecessors who fled FrumForum after Scott Brown won, I have endured a steady stream of personal insults, put-downs, and personal insinuations.
Somewhere along the line,
you incorporated the left-wing mindset that anyone who isn’t a leftist is contemptible and must be treated as such.
You don’t know me and I don’t know you.
The Internet lets us hide behind our anonymity.
But you leftists keep abusing that privilege.
Just like you keep abusing the privilege of living in America.
And that should be fixed someday.
Yester-House, Yester-Senate, Yesterday « Around The Sphere // Mar 3, 2010 at 5:25 pm
[...] Frum responds to Erickson. Frum responds to Bartlett, Yglesias, and [...]
There’s Actually Some Things To Do « noot // Mar 6, 2010 at 6:03 pm
[...] response: If it were possible for two paragraphs to sum up everything that is wrong with the American [...]