Frank Rich: In Praise Of Extremism

New York Magazine:

What good did bipartisanship ever do anybody?

Read the whole story: New York Magazine

Comments

[StopMakingSense2]

03:28 PM on 09/26/2011

Does it matter in a plutocracy? They get what they paid for regardless of who sits in the White House. As long as voters don't care that their vote is irrelevant our decline will continue.

[ContraEgoiste]

03:13 PM on 09/26/2011

I completely agree with Frank Rich. At best, all that a president that "plays~nice" has achieved is to become an easy target for those who vowed to make him a "1~term~president". But we don't get off that easy; it has seriously hurt the Democratic Party.

It is not that the democratic principles are shunned by the majority of the U.S. population, I actually believe the opposite to be true, but in a “me 1st” uber capitalistic society, the majorities makes their decision based on their bottom~line, and a stalled government affects everybody's bottom line. In other words, it is not democratic ideas that people are turning away from, but the perceived notion that democrats are ineffective at governing, which Obama's "reconciliatory" approach has enabled the right to achieve.

To a degree, I think we as a nation deceived ourselves into thinking that in 2008 when Obama declared his intention of walking the center, it was just campaign rhetoric to bring in fence~sitters and independents. And when we saw a man of a very different background, we fooled ourselves into believing "how could such a man not be completely progressive?”, but the foreboding that I pushed aside when he basically chose Clinton’s cabinet has come to past, and then I still deceived myself that it would be this very progressive man who would be driving them, and not the other way around as it turned out.

Still, he is the only choice we now have left.

[gx5000]

01:16 PM on 09/26/2011

Barry, listen man, time to take out the trash or be swept out with it, seriously.

[Lisica]

12:58 PM on 09/26/2011

Rich's article is a good argument for a system of proportional representation, where parties are more clearly defined by their principles and share power according to their percentage of the vote.

Since the US is never going to have a PR system, the second best choice would be a system in which more than two parties compete and the parties have little overlap between them in terms of principles. That would give voters much more of a choice. But that's not going to happen, either, as long as "winner take all" elections exist.

One can't blame Republicans for standing up for clearly defined principles; Democrats need to do the same and not sell them out--otherwise, "bipartisanship" will push us further and further to the right.

[jsgaetano]

12:31 PM on 09/26/2011

The problem Obama doesn't understand is nobody respects a weak leader. That's why conservatves, who are always 100% wrong on everything, win elections- because they're authoritatively wrong, and unapologetically wrong, and confidently and willfully wrong. Nobody doubts their convictions to being wrong. But Obama wants to pretend he's a liberal while passing conservative plans in backroom dealing. So he can't be authoritatively liberal, because he doesn't believe in liberal ideology. And he can't be authoritatively conservative, because he wants to pretend he's a Democrat.

[rksnj67]

01:10 PM on 09/26/2011

Spot on!

[oz3472]

01:12 PM on 09/26/2011

more like - Spot, roll over and play dead for me because you're not doing what I want you to on EVERY issue

[GCurry]

12:09 PM on 09/26/2011

That's right. Who needs bipartisanship?

Obama stood for bipartisanship in 2004 and 2008. Remember? No red states, and blue states, only the UNITED States? But he led the Democrats with "Yes, We Can" which I guess made them the Party of Yes.

Party of Yes ... meet the Party of No, and meet the new (Tea) Party of Hell, No. Meet elitism. Meet racism. Meet selfishness and obsessive self-interest. Meet self-delusion. Meet obstructionism. Meet intransigence.

In that scenario, bipartisanship seeks compromise and negotiation. But when the Parties of No hold their line, compromise just moves Yes towards No.

So the Dems have morphed from the Party of "Yes" to the Party of Maybe, and then the Party of Probably Not. Hard to see the difference between that and No, some days. All because of bipartisanship.

This is not the time for bipartisanship. Americans must choose. Do we want neofeudalism and every man for himself and mean streets? Or do we want to find a way to share for survival on a finite planet with 7B of us? This is not the time for hybrid ideology; this is the time for clear thinking and choice.

[jmpurser]

11:38 AM on 09/26/2011

One other issue is structural I think. The Republicans, for all their faults, KNOW what they stand for. It's like walking into MacDonalds, you know it will be bad for you but you also know EXACTLY what you can get and the only real option is to "supersize" what was bad in the first place. But what do Democrats actually stand for? Women's rights? They've been folding on Roe vs Wade for 30 years. Gay rights? DADT was their baby. The working class? NAFTA. The environment? Before the BP disaster and a few months after Obama's policy was "Drill baby drill" along with supporting coal and nuclear. Anti-war? Not so's you'd notice. Protecting the new deal? Clinton was on board to cut SS before a stained dress sent him screaming back to the Left and Obama has repeatedly put it on every table that he can find. He's DYING to weaken the new deal. For at least the last 30 years the Democrats have been nothing but "Not quite as bad as the GOP". There's no "there" there. So if you mix Democratic and Republican goals in the spirit of "bipartisanship" you get pure republican ideology. Democrats simply bring nothing to the party. So when a Democrat like Obama claims he seeks "bipartisan" solutions, what he's telling you is he's planning on governing as a Republican if elected. And I don't see that changing in my lifetime.

[Jeff Parfitt]

11:35 AM on 09/26/2011

For every reason laid in this article, I am opposed to Rick Perry. He doesn't care about the welfare of the nation, only his own power and the power of his friends, the big company lobbyists. Absolute conservatism takes no brain cells for someone like Perry; he just has to get up there, say a couple of phrases that sound catchy and appropriately Republican, and people will fall over themselves to vote for him. Unfortunately, it would be like asking a CEO to come up with the limitations of CEOs. He'll do the job, but it won't help anyone but himself and his friends.

[inLA]

11:32 AM on 09/26/2011

Ever since Rich started writing for New York Magazine, it's almost impossible to find anything in his articles worth quoting.

[playsindirt]

10:54 AM on 09/26/2011

“Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.” ― Clint Eastwood

[jmpurser]

11:17 AM on 09/26/2011

I think Clint got this all messed up.  First off if you go far enough right you don't wind up Left and there's a big difference between being rigid and being extremist.

[Flat Harrold]

11:56 AM on 09/26/2011

No no. he means that extremism is found on BOTH sides..and none of it is good.
Alternatively I could argue that if you go far enough to the right you find yourself up Anne Coulter's, er.....

[playsindirt]

09:26 AM on 09/27/2011

I think your reading comprehension needs help.

[sposton]

10:50 AM on 09/26/2011

Like all other M$M authors Frank Rich engages in the analysis of what is readily visible. This always leaves people behind the curtains unmentioned. Everyone readily admits that our political system is bought and paid for by corporatocracy but we just leave it at that as if these people who had bought our political system don't have any larger plans in mind. This is an utterly illogical notion. There is no question that what we currently have is the result of decades of decision making by our economic elites. The people certainly did not make a collective decision to de-industrialize the country and export our jobs to China! Why not ask a question - what is the real aim of these economic elites who had brought us here and are still fully in charge? Obama, Perry or whoever becomes president seem all to be just servants of the master classes. The boxing match is rigged but the commentators still talk about it as if it were real.

[Hotspot]

11:12 AM on 09/26/2011

Your question "what is the real aim of these economic elites who had brought us here", I would love to know the answer . . . no taxes and regulations, our way or no way? But, I believe they did make a "collective decision to de-industr­ialize the country and export our jobs to China! Then there's social engineering . . . but I digress.

[sposton]

11:34 AM on 09/26/2011

I don't know what the answer is but judging by the results so far their aims don't seem to have to the best interests of the people in mind. ;-)

Ask yourself the following question:

Are we trending more toward greater democracy or further toward centralization of power in fewer and fewer hands? I believe most would agree we are not trending toward greater democracy. And most of us intrinsically understand that an unchecked dynamic toward greater centralization of power invariably ends up in tyranny.

It is not hard to imagine that the economic elites in this country have taken us to the covert tyranny in which we find ourselves. Unless there is a significant push in the other direction from the people soon, this tyranny will eventually end up in an overt hardened tyranny backed up by all the powers of the coercive state. The laws to enable all of that already exist.

It is rather puzzling how people miss this dynamic and allow themselves to be swept away by the artificial commentary about horse racing in the political theater all around us.

[OhShuShu]

10:21 AM on 09/26/2011

Thank you, Mr. Rich. Good article, something to think about.

[Weirdo]

10:16 AM on 09/26/2011

I see Americans Elect not as a vain and deluded exercise, but rather as an attempt to raise a candidate from the grassroots who stands for the great majority of Americans without millions of dollars and legions of lobbyists. Hoping (and that's all that's left when it comes to Obama) that Obama will turn on a dime and actually fight Republican extremism instead of shrinking before it is naive and delusional. Hoping that the Democratic Party will stand and fight Republican extremism is simply insane.

Rich is arguing, like so many before him, that it's best to keep voting for the least worst candidate, while we watch our political system degenerate into dysfunction, right before our eyes. If bipartisanism is a chimera, then so, surely, is reliance on a broken two party system that has ground to halt and grinding its people to dust.

Obama was right about one thing, we can't rely on him (or the Democrats) to make the change that is so desperately needed. It's up to us. To h-ll with them.

[seldoc]

10:14 AM on 09/26/2011

The bottom line is this. The Tea Party does not negotiate and it does not compromise. Given that, in spite of what pundits like Friedman, Brooks and company might say, there is no middle ground. Time after time they've given the Democrats and Obama one choice, either capitulate completely to their demands or they'll destroy the economy, the poor, the country or whatever else might make a hostage in any particular situation.

[aacme]

10:10 AM on 09/26/2011

Con't:
To attempt "bipartisanship" with such people , thirty years into their takeover, is beyond folly. If the president has finally seen the light, too late in the game beyond imagining, then praise be to all good things. Frankly, I think it's just campaign season again. Time for round two of priming the rubes for the election. I believe Mr. Obama has one chance to pull this off. A lot of people think he is batting for the other side.
I, for one, having suffered being called a f++king retard, will not accept anything less than a full, televised apology, and an explanation for what took a magna cum laude Harvard man three agonizing years to figure out what half the country already knew.
If he has finally figured it out, and it's not just campaign rhetoric, he needs to prove it.

[nwlover]

12:31 PM on 09/26/2011

Fanned and faved. You and some other posters here make Frank Rich look like a simpleton. You drill right down to the truth and have no problem seeing the problem at it's core. Thankyou