June 19, 2007

Be careful what you wish for

I feel like I am the person to whom that admonition must have been directed. As a socially liberal, fiscally conservative environmentalist, I should be thrilled right now with all this discussion of people reaching across party lines to enact policies that more or less match my view of the world. Plus, that's basically the theme of the book I am writing about Schwarzenegger, so the more the topic gets discussed, the more people should want to read what I write.

But I guess I find the general discussion of partisanship and compromise kind of excruciating. I am all over it when it comes to its practical application, what it means for health care or transportation or education or the environment. In each of those cases, in fact, it's going to play out differently, and it is going to play out differently depending on who is in the executive, who is in the Legislature, and what procedural rules empower or marginalize the minority. So while it's nice to commit to bipartisanship on general principle, it doesn't do much for me. I want to talk about how it applies to practical problems that are real to people in their lives.

Posted by dweintraub on June 19, 2007 1:42 PM