or log jam in the U.S. Senate now that the Democrats are down to 59 potential votes. I say this because the forces that have created this mess in Washington are not the least unlike the pervasiveness and irreducibility of physical gravity. Ubiquitous and inexorable are these forces and the cure is not for Vice President Biden to become CEO of the Senate and get himself impeached or worse. The problem is also way deeper than newly sworn-in Senator Brown, although he does seem to resemble a talisman of the problem.
The problem in Washington is partly the deliberately inherent clash of forces envisioned by the Framers as a bulwark against tyranny of the Legislature or the other two branches. Understanding that representatives have split personalities ... if not the mental wherewithall to carry that off ... they are tossed by the need to teach and listen at home, on the one hand, and to rise above their petty concerns towards the "statesmanship" required for legislating in the 3rd most populace nation on earth.
Then, with statesmanship in the tool box, ideology must give way occasionally to pragmatism. The Republicans' idea of pragmatism currently is to understand that thwarting anything Obama tries to accomplish will accrue to their general benefit, that is, a program completely devoid of the substance of ideology and purely obstructionist. Joe Biden cannot fix that with the slender powers given him by the Constitution!
The failure in Washington, as always, is one of leadership. Nancy Pelosi and her team seem to have the House in some kind of herded cats order, but dear old Harry Reid and the rest of the pompinjays on the Democratic side in the Senate are utterly bereft of statesmanlike leadership. True, Harry can make a deal, but equally those deals fall apart the moment Harry leaves the room. He just does not have clout ... and the White House cannot give it to him, especially a White House "run" by Rahm Emanuel, whose cachet is rampant vulgarity, childish temper tantrums, and ineffective persuasion. Rahm has not accomplished anything in Congress, and I defy anyone to point out a single instance of success. Just one!
Pearlstein is right about one thing. We are nearly at a state of paralysis from this misbegotten sloganeering about bipartisanship. Obama is completely deluded if he thinks that the center will hold for him if he plays these games. There is no way that the center holds; it is a fiction and a state of mind based in indecision and clearly not statesmanship. Obama must change, Emanuel must leave or be tossed out on his ass, and the Senate must look elsewhere than Nevada for Majority leadership. Joe Biden can work with these folks, but his titular Presidency of the Senate is another of those buckets of warm spit.
JB
