The WSJ called my attention to Friday’s column by Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. (Registration required to read.) Once more when it comes to modern liberal politics I find myself in a CCR moment in which I wonder, still I wonder.
Mr. Robinson’s subject of the moment is the angry electorate which he declares to be “acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.” Of course they are. American’s have a license to act that way. Lots of our heroes, on the page and on the screen, are brats who nonetheless find it in themselves to do the right thing. It’s probably a significant part of the national character.
Which brings me back to ER and the liberal experiment. His is a tortured argument in which democracy is a good thing except when the electorate gets it in its mind to vote out the incumbents. That’s because, he says, voters don’t want to make the hard choices. He suggests, however obliquely, that more or less the current Congressional make-up is the best bet to make those hard choices.
It might be easier to accept that line of reasoning if there were some evidence to support it. To Mr. Robinson, I guess, evidence is not required and intention matters more.
Let’s be clear about worldviews here: AHC holds no brief for anyone and makes no exceptions. Elites are elites and a columnist at a national paper is a member of an elite, maybe several elites. A hallmark of elites is that while they may find reasons to tinker with the standing order they have no real reason to find absolute fault with it.
Ultimately that’s Robinson’s problem. The laughable proposition (probably unintentionally so) that his is not a partisan argument aside, he most certainly favors the crew that the same electoral anger swept in in 2008. Funny how a couple of years can make all the difference in a belief system.
Unless the belief system is not about fundamentals but about letting people you agree with run things.
An Honest Con 