Why real life is not The West Wing

In real life, Republicans and their policy arguments are not required to be easily beaten strawmen. [Link]

The American President and The West Wing are not searing portrayals of effective political management.  They're drama.  The first question a dramatist asks is not "Is this how it really works?" but "Is it entertaining?"  And the second is "Can the audience understand this in less than thirty seconds?"  Veracity is way, way down the list.  If you want a clue to how realistic it all is, consider that Aaron Sorkin awarded Jed Bartlett the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Then go interview some Nobel Prizewinning Economists and ask yourself whether a single one of them would have the desire, or the ability, to run for president.  

Jed Bartlett doesn't win policy debates because of his amazing tactical skills, his overpowering arguments, or the sheer persuasiveness of his granite-faced brand of urbane folksomeness.  He wins them because Aaron Sorkin is a liberal and he wants Republicans to lose on the major issues.  Unfortunately for liberals, Tom Coburn and John Boehner don't have their lines faxed over from Hollywood every morning.  

Walter Russell Mead had an even harsher reaction.  You have to read the whole thing to get the full effect, but here's the nut graf:  

This is a politician getting down to what the New York Times editorial page seems to think is a particularly fetching set of brass knuckles: reciting liberal talking points one after another in rapid fire sequence. That’s hardball, that’s brass tacks at least in the mind of Maureen Dowd, a woman who on the evidence of this column could and would teach her own grandmother to suck eggs.

If you want to actually understand why gun control failed, let's try a simple exercise.  Raise your hand if you had a strong opinion about the background check bill that was in front of Congress.  

Keep your hand raised if you know how your own Senator voted on it.  Otherwise put your hand down.

Keep your hand raised if you actually live in a state that might plausibly elect a Republican to congress.   

Okay, now keep your hand raised if that bill was in the top one or two issues that you'll be voting on in 2014 or 2016.  By which I mean, if your Senator votes the wrong way on that bill, you will vote for anyone who opposes them.  Anyone--even someone with the wrong opinions on gay marriage, social security reform, transportation subsidies, the Keystone XL pipeline, carbon taxes, marginal tax rates on people who make more than $250k per annum, the deficit, and student loan repayment programs.  

Now look around.  Aside from those three guys in the back from Handgun Control Inc., do you know who still has their hand raised?  NRA members.  

Support for new gun control laws was high in the immediate post-Newtown period.  But that support was evanescent; it's already back below 50%, and probably still falling.  Gun owners care year in and year out.  And they vote on the issue.  

This had little to do with the fearsome power of "the NRA", or their fundraising efforts.  It had to do with gun owners who will do their best to unelect any politician who votes to deprive them of what they view as constitutional rights.  Those gun owners are more likely to live in swing states than the most avid gun controllers: progressives who cram themselves into a handful of cities.  And they vote on the issue, unlike progressives, who, for all their furor at the outcome, put a large number of issues--taxes, abortion, welfare programs, and so forth--much higher on their list of priorities.  By 2014, the odds of any "No" vote losing their job over it are pretty slim.  

Also from the same article, how Congress changed in the 70's and why Obama can't channel FDR or LBJ when he wants something from them. [Link]

Burton had promised that weakening the big shots would heighten the accountability and responsiveness of Congress. No question, Congress became more responsive. But it simultaneously became dramatically less effective and accountable. Under the old system, only a comparative handful of members had any power. If they abused that power, it would be noticed-if not by the press, then by their colleagues, and if noticed, then punished. But now dozens, maybe even hundreds, of congressmen controlled the fates of fines, industries, whole nations. Hundreds of special interests soon buzzed round those dozens, pressing money into their hands, lobbying, cajoling, persuading. The ambitious new subcommittee chairmen, hungry for campaign contributions to stave off the electorate's post-1978 Republican trend, all too eagerly responded to their donors' concerns. But since their most active constituents simultaneously expected them to flay those donors in the name of anticorporate liberalism, ghat responsiveness had to be disguised and concealed. The chairmen coped with their dilemma by evasion: by voting one way on procedural votes and then another on the merits of the hill, or voting "no" on laws they really favored after first establishing that the thing had the support to pass even without their vote. In this deliberately created muddle, nobody-often not even the congressmen themselves-could ever quite discern why things happened, who had made things happen, or even frequently what had happened. It was hopeless to imagine that an ordinary citizen could force his way through the buzzing cloud, much less exert any real influence. Very much to the surprise of the reform members, this new, more responsive, less hierarchical Congress got less done than the old oligarchy had. "The day is gone," said new Ways and Means chairman Al Ullman of Washington State, "when a chairman can wrap a neat little package in his back room. The open hearings and open markups, in which all members, not just a few, have a say, is the way this committee must work." The old unreformed Congress had enacted the Supplemental Security Income program in 1971. The new reformed Congress could never quite organize itself to enact anything on such a large scale ever again.

Lyndon Johnson could win with a little armtwisting because that's all he needed to do--a little armtwisting.  Obama needed to armtwist half the house, and a substantial number in the Senate, thanks to the rise of the filibuster . . . which is arguably itself a result of the 1970s revolution that heightened partisanship and congressional responsiveness, at the expense of collegiality and party discipline.