Why Bother?

That's the advice of National Journal's Ronald Brownstein, who thinks in a world of sixty vote supermajorities that the best course of action is nothing at all.

Obama's first year demonstrated once again that in this deeply polarized political era, big legislative crusades aimed at big national problems produce only big political headaches. President George W. Bush learned that when his failed drive to restructure Social Security helped trigger his precipitous second-term political collapse. And now, like President Clinton, Obama is at risk of cracking his presidency on the immovable rock of health care reform. Democrats control the White House, the House, and, even after the Massachusetts vote, 59 Senate seats, more than either party has held since 1980, except during the past several months. Yet much of Washington assumes, probably correctly, that Democrats are now condemned to gridlock.

Republicans believe that Obama's problem is that he's pushing so much government intervention in the economy. That's undoubtedly part of the story. But Obama's larger difficulty is that he's pushing so much change at a time when filibuster threats are so common that it requires 60 Senate votes to pass almost everything -- and the minority party won't provide the president votes on almost anything. We are operating in what amounts to a parliamentary system without majority rule, a formula for futility.

Republicans would likely be facing equivalent troubles if they had the power to advance their goal of retrenching government. Does anyone imagine that a President John McCain would be flourishing if he had spent 2009 attempting, over unified Democratic resistance, to impose his campaign agenda of eliminating the tax incentive for employer-provided health care and reducing the growth of Medicare spending? Or that House Republicans would be thriving if they could enact their 2009 budget proposal to literally end Medicare for Americans now younger than 55 and replace it with a voucher to buy private insurance?

In that alternate universe, Democrats would almost certainly be the ones celebrating off-year upsets. The common thread is that it's extremely difficult to sell this country on big change, in any direction, without at least some bipartisan validation. That's especially true in today's communications maelstrom, where overtly partisan media sources tirelessly incite the opposition party's base against the president.

 Ahh, good old moral equivalency.  Because ending Medicare for those under 55 is exactly as insane as trying to cover the 50 million Americans without health insurance, and both are equally silly goals for America.

59 votes in the Senate is now gridlock.  That can't possibly be the problem, can it?