The Fever Swamp of the Center, Continued:
I love Jonathan Chait’s phrase “the fever swamp of the center”; it really is true that self-identified centrists are sounding crazier and crazier, as they try to reconcile their fanatical devotion to the proposition that both parties are equally at fault with the distressing reality that Obama actually advocates the policies they claim to want…. [T]oday’s WaPo editorial… a new pitch. The editorial admits that Obama is calling for exactly the polices the WaPo wants… but the piece is nonetheless written as a criticism of Obama, because:
Mr. Obama has presented entitlement reform as something he would do grudgingly, as a favor to the opposition, when he should be explaining to the American people — and to his party — why it is an urgent national need.
Oh, Barack, you’re telling me what I want to hear, but you don’t sound as if you mean it!… [I]t’s all there: hyperventilating about the deficit, together with an absolute determination to blame both sides equally no matter how unbalanced they really are. And as Chait, Greg Sargent, and others say, this refusal to hold the worse parties accountable is in itself an important source of our political dysfunction.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
