JONATHAN CHAIT MAY 12, 2010
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I haven't checked in on Fred Barnes' wildly partisan alternate universe in a while. The latest development there is that President Obama is incredibly stubborn and refuses to compromise on anything:
Obama has talked about compromise, but has neither sought nor produced a single one.
Obama has succumbed to the temptation of large majorities. The lopsided Democratic margins—59-41 in the Senate, 254-177 (four vacancies) in the House—allowed him to win approval of his health care plan without making a single meaningful concession to Republicans. And he’s pursuing a partisan, no-compromise strategy with his remaining initiatives this year.
Wow. The health care law, in addition to compromising away the public plan (which Barnes has apparently never heard of), was based in its very structure on extensive bipartisan negotiations in the Senate. The stimulus was compromised by hundreds of billions of dollars, and consisted of nearly 40% tax cuts. Financial regulation is currently being shaped by extensive bipartisan negotiations. (To be sure, Obama began by daring Republicans to oppose the bill, but he's since welcomed compromise.) And Obama selected Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court over more liberal alternatives largely because she enjoyed significant GOP support.
Barnes, of course, spent the Bush years taking dictation from Karl Rove's office, and lauding Bush's ultra-partisan strategy. Now he's a believer in compromise. Such a believer that his new model is Henry Clay:
I go for honorable compromise whenever it can be made. Life itself is but a compromise between death and life, the struggle continuing throughout our whole existence. . . . All legislation, all government, all society, is formed upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these, everything is based.”
Those are not the words of President Obama, though he would have you believe they express a sentiment he personifies. Rather, they come from a Senate debate in 1850 and were spoken by Henry Clay, known then and now as the Great Compromiser.
Clay authored the three greatest compromises in American history, two limiting the spread of slavery outside the South (1820, 1850) and one on tariffs (1833).
Of course, the 1850 compromise included the Fugitive Slave Act, which was not only barbaric but also inflamed the issue and helped lead to the Civil War.
11 comments
And Dredd Scott, in partial reliance on the perfect Constitution written by the perfect Founding Fathers worshipped by the Tea-Party and venerated by the Conservatariat that categorized slaves as 3/5th of a man, found that slaves were not persons. Of course, the Civil War was not about slavery at all, only about the states' right to have slavery or not, which is not at all the same thing. Oy.
- icarusr
May 12, 2010 at 10:35am
In point of fact, the Compromise of 1850 allowed slavery into the territories seized from Mexico, where slavery had previously been abolished, using the same "popular sovereignty" principle that later proved so disastrous in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. And the Missouri Compromise was widely viewed at the time as a win for the Slave States; they got Missouri, and the principle that Congress could not demand abolition of slavery as a precondition to statehood, while giving up territory that was widely regarded at the time as uninhabitable by European-Americans. Clay was never interested in limiting the territorial expansion of slavery; he [like most antebellum politicians] just saw slavery as [to be anachronistic] a "third rail" issue that would destroy the Union unless it was swept under the rug.
- colablease
May 12, 2010 at 10:50am
And many progressives fear that Obama's compromises (often unnecessary) have embedded similar poison pills that will produce great problems (maybe even disasters) in health care, job creation, Afghanistan, and financial regulation. Maybe Barnes in unknowingly correct.
- drofnats1
May 12, 2010 at 11:09am
Well, you know, Fred Barnes is for compromise, when his party is in the minority. Is there anyone prominent on the journalistic right that is worse than Barnes in his egregious prognostications, his flackery, and his all-around idiocy? It is a tight contest between him and Billy Kristol, but even here I think Barnes takes the gold.
- liberal reformer
May 12, 2010 at 11:13am
In the minds of Barnes and his ilk, nineteenth-century American politics was clearly all about politeness, comity, and courtesy.
- ironyroad
May 12, 2010 at 11:28am
Now, I challenge anyone who claims to be a bigger fan of Henry Clay than I. By far the greatest American politician never to have been president. But Barnes completely misreads the man. What for Clay was practical, Barnes treats as moral, and what for Clay was moral, Barnes seems to disregard as merely practical. There's a hefty new biography of Clay just out (Henry Clay: The Essential American); it would be great for everyone if Barnes would stop writing until he read it. Not because Barnes will learn anything, but just because any time Barnes spends not writing is a victory for America.
- rhubarbs
May 12, 2010 at 11:34am
Fred Barnes is ontologically incapable of learning anything.
- liberal reformer
May 12, 2010 at 1:47pm
"Fred Barnes is ontologically incapable of learning anything." Well, since I cannot conceive of a pundit worse than Fred Barnes, does that mean he necessarily exists?
- timteeter
May 12, 2010 at 3:17pm
"Well, since I cannot conceive of a pundit worse than Fred Barnes." I don't know tim - Krauthammer gives Fred a good run for his money.
- icarusr
May 12, 2010 at 5:11pm
"In the minds of Barnes and his ilk, nineteenth-century American politics was clearly all about politeness, comity, and courtesy." And I'm sure that when Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner senseless with a cane on the floor of Congress, I'm sure (in Barnes's mind) it was done with tremendous decorum and politeness.
- cspencef
May 12, 2010 at 7:34pm
No, tim, he unfortunately exits, it is just that his cognitive capabilities are damaged beyond repair. And bite your tongue, icar. Charles Krauthammer is infinitely smarter than Fred Barnes, which is what makes him dangerous. Krauthammer had some sense of fairness in the 90s, some of the time. That sense is entirely missing in this century and he has become a partisan hack. That said, where partisan politics isn't involved, you can still learn from reading CK. That is never true of FB. I pity the person that has such trouble judging quality.
- liberal reformer
May 13, 2010 at 1:04am