Political hypochondriacs-End of immigration bill isn't end of world

[babylonsister]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=22414

Political hypochondriacs
End of immigration bill isn't end of world
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Washington Post Writers Group
06.14.07

WASHINGTON -- We have become political hypochondriacs. We seem eager to declare that "the system" has come down with some dread disease, to proclaim that an ideological "center" blessed by the heavens no longer exists, and woe unto us. An imperfect immigration bill is pulled from the Senate floor and you'd think the Capitol dome had caved in.

It's all nonsense, but it is not harmless nonsense. The tendency to blame the system is a convenient way of leaving no one accountable. Those who offer this argument can sound sage without having to grapple with the specifics of any piece of legislation. There is the unspoken assumption that wisdom always lies in the political middle, no matter how unsavory the recipe served up by a given group of self-proclaimed centrists might be.

snip//


The simple truth is that a majority of Americans (I'm one of them) came to oppose President Bush's privatization ideas. That reflected both a principled stand and a practical judgment. From our point of view, a proposal to cut benefits and create private accounts was radical, not centrist.

An authentically "centrist" solution to this problem would involve some modest benefit cuts and some modest tax increases. It will happen some day. But for now, conservatives don't want to support any tax increases. I think the conservatives are wrong, and they'd argue that they're principled. What we have here is a political disagreement, not a system problem. We have these things called elections to settle political disagreements.

Is Washington a mess? In many ways it is. The simplest explanation has to do with some bad choices made by President Bush. He started a misguided war that is now sapping his influence, he has treated Democrats as if they were infected with tuberculosis, and Republicans in Congress as if they were his valets. No wonder he's having trouble pushing through a bill whose main opponents are his own ideological allies.

Maybe you would place blame elsewhere. But please identify some real people or real political forces and not just some faceless entity that you call the system. Please be specific, bearing in mind that when hypochondriacs misdiagnose vague ailments they don't have, they often miss the real ones.

[Crazy Dave]

1. It's always been said

Politicians are a direct reflection of the people who elected them.