A good article! I agree with your assessment of Congress and also with where you come down on the debate between Jonah and Charlie.
“ To summarize Charlie (broadly, and at some risk of a strawman), there is a reasonable position that in a highly divided polity, a polity that lacks substantial and durable majorities, the net result of stasis is the optimal result. If this means bouncing back and forth between extreme and incompatible policy prescriptions, then so be it, things are “working”. As he described it, if one side is asking to build a wall & ban all immigration and the other side demands to have open borders, there isn’t really a compromise to be had, so doing nothing is quite reasonable.”
I listened to that episode and you gave a fair summary of Charlie’s position.
“ However much as I tend to enjoy his writing, accent, and principled thought, I must admit I part ways with the esteemed Charlie Cooke’s expressed position.”
Yes. He’s a joy to listen to as well, but I part ways too.
“ we are in a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing feedback loops and the current lack of effective legislating actually makes the next iteration even less effective,”
I hadn’t thought of it in terms of each Congress being less effective than the last, but when you put it like that, I think you’re right.
“ What Charlie misses and Jonah hints at is that our current equilibrium is unstable - it actually leads to a worse follow-up state.”
Yes! My problem with Charlie’s analysis is that I’d be all in favor of gridlock and nothing getting done if we didn’t have problems. But to take just his example of immigration, its a mess and the worst of both worlds instead of a stasis compromise position in line with the American people’s desires. If we have problems, we do need to be able to resolve them, not let them fester. But more importantly, the trajectory we’re on is not good and momentum is in a bad direction for the country, in which case, Charlie’s stasis in Congress is an unsustainable radioactive decay in the country.
“ First, the simplest critique of the Charlie Cooke Contention, or CCC for short10, is that he’s wrong when it comes to proclaiming that we’re actually getting gridlock as our result.”
Yes! You hit the nail on the head! We don’t have gridlock. We have gridlock punctuated by a massive encroachment by the administrative state. We get nothing and then boom another ratchet to the left bringing us further towards Tocqueville’s bureaucratic despotism. Then conservatives get in office and either do nothing or pass a tax cut. Meanwhile Medicare will collapse in five years. The ratchet effect. Which I’d be remiss in not pointing out, is always one way as Scalia was so fond of reminding us. All ratchet’s are “one way ratchets” so it’s redundant.
You've convinced me.
A good article! I agree with your assessment of Congress and also with where you come down on the debate between Jonah and Charlie.
“ To summarize Charlie (broadly, and at some risk of a strawman), there is a reasonable position that in a highly divided polity, a polity that lacks substantial and durable majorities, the net result of stasis is the optimal result. If this means bouncing back and forth between extreme and incompatible policy prescriptions, then so be it, things are “working”. As he described it, if one side is asking to build a wall & ban all immigration and the other side demands to have open borders, there isn’t really a compromise to be had, so doing nothing is quite reasonable.”
I listened to that episode and you gave a fair summary of Charlie’s position.
“ However much as I tend to enjoy his writing, accent, and principled thought, I must admit I part ways with the esteemed Charlie Cooke’s expressed position.”
Yes. He’s a joy to listen to as well, but I part ways too.
“ we are in a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing feedback loops and the current lack of effective legislating actually makes the next iteration even less effective,”
I hadn’t thought of it in terms of each Congress being less effective than the last, but when you put it like that, I think you’re right.
“ What Charlie misses and Jonah hints at is that our current equilibrium is unstable - it actually leads to a worse follow-up state.”
Yes! My problem with Charlie’s analysis is that I’d be all in favor of gridlock and nothing getting done if we didn’t have problems. But to take just his example of immigration, its a mess and the worst of both worlds instead of a stasis compromise position in line with the American people’s desires. If we have problems, we do need to be able to resolve them, not let them fester. But more importantly, the trajectory we’re on is not good and momentum is in a bad direction for the country, in which case, Charlie’s stasis in Congress is an unsustainable radioactive decay in the country.
“ First, the simplest critique of the Charlie Cooke Contention, or CCC for short10, is that he’s wrong when it comes to proclaiming that we’re actually getting gridlock as our result.”
Yes! You hit the nail on the head! We don’t have gridlock. We have gridlock punctuated by a massive encroachment by the administrative state. We get nothing and then boom another ratchet to the left bringing us further towards Tocqueville’s bureaucratic despotism. Then conservatives get in office and either do nothing or pass a tax cut. Meanwhile Medicare will collapse in five years. The ratchet effect. Which I’d be remiss in not pointing out, is always one way as Scalia was so fond of reminding us. All ratchet’s are “one way ratchets” so it’s redundant.
Your friend is pretty smart by the way.