The System Worked

No, I'm not quoting Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano who famously claimed, "The system worked," when it was actually other airline passengers who overpowered the Christmas Day bomber.   No, I'm talking about Charles Krauthammer responding to the progressive peanut gallery who've taken to chirping that America is ungovernable.

It's 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama's two signature initiatives -- cap-and-trade and health-care reform -- lie in ruins.

Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: "America the Ungovernable." So declared Newsweek. "Is America Ungovernable?" coyly asked the New Republic. Guess the answer. 

[...]

Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health-care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: "Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama's (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. . . .But in this case there's a simpler explanation: Barack Obama's job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed."

He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise -- expanded coverage at lower cost -- led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public opinion polls, then in elections -- Virginia, New Jersey and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.

Gridlock in our American constitutional system of government is a feature, not a bug.

Comments

[CaptDMO]

Hmmm... I think the Divine Intervention of a massive snow fall, that
apparently is enough to seize up the intricate workings of Washington
for even a few days, should not be ignored as an "assist" on goal.

Since that storm, more "Democratic" legislators (obviously fearing the projected outcome of actual democracy), and one more (inexplicably) revered champion of curing global warming (by giving your assets to his masters), have opted to simply fade away into obscurity, while they still can.