The Village Explained

...by Josh Marshall.

Who are we talking about? The journalists. The lobbyists. The people who work in the think tanks and quasi-think tanks where purported policy experts work. The employees of the majority activist groups on both sides of the political spectrum. The list could go on and on. But this gives a basic flavor of who we're talking about.

We're coming off of, or at least we've had a period of (because who knows about the future) thirty plus years of conservative dominance of Washington. By some measures you could say forty years. But at least thirty, notwithstanding Bill Clinton's eight years in office. That conditions a generation of people with mindsets based around Republicans being the party of power, the party whose ideas get vindicated at the polls. Most of all Washington is a city that coddles up to and worships power. But a generation of one party holding the reins selects for certain kinds of journalists in key positions of power, the policy experts at the think tanks who get the journalists calls, the lobbyists who move the most money and so forth. You build up a set of assumptions about what kinds of people and ideas are respectable and which aren't. Which are old-fashioned, which are 'cutting edge' and so forth. Who defines conventional wisdom?

In all of these respects, DC remains overwhelmingly wired for the GOP.

The Village still hasn't gotten the memo that the Democrats matter. Obama to them is still a combination of Will Smith and Jimmy Carter. President's got game, but he may be in over his head. He's a curiosity, a gimmick, a ratings boost for sweeps, but not a leader. They're running with it, because it allows them to control the narrative, and surprise, surprise, the GOP just happens to have the same empty suit and a smile opinion of Obama.

The Village loves running Washington, but they also love access to the halls of power, it's how they make their living. The Obama team is fighting back by setting ground rules, and the Village is countering by ignoring Obama and instead interviewing every Republican they still have in the contacts list to give the inevitable "Well he's a nice guy, but..." speech.

And that's why we're seeing the moronic articles about Obama's "rocky start" and other such nonsense after the guy has passed more legislation in a month than Bush bothered to do in years. Both the GOP and the Village operate on pure fantasy, and they're both great at manufacturing it. Talking about the facts? We can't have that. Facts are boring.

The new babysitter wants to actually enforce the bedtime rules, and the Village is having precisely none of that shit.