The New Republic and Slate have many talented writers, but they’re also responsible for taking the cult of the “counterintuitive” to dysfunctional extremes. That’s why I was shocked to see TNR’s Bradford Plumer slamming the latest everything-you-know-is-wrong piece from Slate:
Yes, yes, people who live in glass houses and all that, but Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg is taking this whole counterintuitive shtick way too far:
[T]here are reasons why the Democrats might be better off denying Republicans the defeat they crave in November. For the Democrats to win the House this year would offer the unappealing prospect of responsibility without power. With a slim majority in the next Congress, Democrats wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything significant. The party would still lack the votes to pass health-care reform or to repeal the Bush tax cuts.
But with control of even one chamber by one vote, the failure to act on such issues would now be their fault as well. Iraq and the fiscal mess would no longer be just Bush’s problems. The Democratic Party will have a much clearer story line heading into the 2008 election if it is simply the party out of power and can call for a complete change.
Good lord. From the folks who brought us “Deep down in his heart, John McCain is secretly a liberal,” and “Anti-Roe justices would be awesome for abortion rights,” it’s the latest bit of “unconventional” liberal wisdom: A Democratic victory in November would be terrible … for Democrats. As my cubicle-mate Elspeth says, it all sounds a lot like some dude psyching himself out of talking to the cute girl in homeroom.
Is it really true that Republicans would benefit by having Nancy Pelosi ascend to the speaker’s throne so that they could “run against her” in 2008? Most voters have no clue who Nancy Pelosi is. Most people will never know who she is. The thinness of models on Project Runway have a better chance of being a campaign issue in 2008 than Nancy Pelosi. Weisberg also thinks the Democrats might have a “clearer story line [in ’08] … if it is simply the party out of power and can call for a complete change.” But a shocking number of American voters never know which party controls Congress. Why would a midterm victory change any of that?
And it strains credibility to think that a Democratic House would have no power. Of course it couldn’t pass universal health care. But if, say, Saint McCain was of the mind to steer a pro-torture bill through the Senate, a Pelosi-controlled House would be in a position to scuttle it. That seems important, no? Virtually every piece of legislation that has emerged from Congress in the past six years has been a combination of a shockingly nutty bill from the House and an only-slightly-less-nutty Senate bill. Most conference committees are dominated by Republicans. Having a Democratic House would change this whole dynamic and stanch the nuttiness factor somewhat. (Of course, given the way Democrats are rolling over for torture these days, maybe that’s overly optimistic.)
One other consideration. In the modern-day Congress, power breeds power. Democrats in control of the House would undoubtedly put themselves in position to make further gains in 2008. The leadership could offer plum committee assignments to vulnerable Democrats, to bolster their electoral chances. They could put an end to harmful votes on wedge issues like flag-burning. And so on. The idea that political parties can “lose by winning” seems unconvincing. Barry Goldwater lost in 1964 and supposedly saved the Republican Party. But look what happened right after he lost: Democrats in Congress expanded the welfare state and essentially cemented support for entitlement spending for generations to come. Hardly the model to emulate.
Coming in two years from Slate: Democrats will be better off losing in 2008 since voters will be really sick of Republicans by 2012. Everything you know is wrong!
Clarification 9/24 10:11 AM: I relied on Plumer’s summary of Weisberg’s article, but as a commenter points out, Weisberg does ultimately reject the counterintuitive “win by losing” argument at the end of his piece. That means both TNR and Slate have both criticized it, which is virtually unprecedented for a faux-clever “counterintuitive” argument (remember, Slate is the publication that ran articles praising the entertainment value of the Pistons-Pacers melee and giving a winking endorsement to voter fraud, while TNR recently published an incoherent liberal defense of Ann Coulter). Has a backlash begun against the cult of the counterintuitive?