Richard Cohen at WaPo figures out America's problem:"the country suffers from a surfeit of democracy"

In a typical tome finding and urging that the president can (indeed he can) and will (yes, probably) attempt to 'ram' thru the health care fiascorama, Cohen says it's not a ram job, and the gains and benefits being invisible (like jobs saved), maybe this is the problem with those stupid Americans. The usual. Along the lines of the galactically moronic trashing of the american people by the New Republic which is sliding into Wallace land anyway

In our poll-driven culture it might seem strange for a president to attempt something that's somewhat unpopular but merely right. After all, the health care bill has almost no near-term benefit for anyone who votes. Its immediate beneficiaries are the uninsured, consisting of the poor and vulnerable, and the young and delusionally invincible. As a voting bloc, they largely don't..

Well, to use that reasoning, I gues the Iraq war was really a good idea since the immediate beneficiaries, the Iraqi people, were totally invivsible here, and have NEVER voted here. And no one can argue invading the sandbox has ANY near term benefit. Maybe we'll know in another 45 years or so. And that was money we could have used as well.

Reductio al absurdum.

But to see the real apotheosis of liberalism in America today, we point out this GEM of tortuous logic at moment when he tries to liken Obama to Lincoln and this frankenstein sum of pieces $600 toilet seat of a health care bill to the Emancipation Proclamation.

The baleful fact is that the country suffers from a surfeit of democracy -- a gazillion interest groups, a gazillion blogs, a gazillion talk shows and all of them insisting on transparency so a gazillion eyes peer over the shoulders of politicians. The black but necessary art of politics shies from the sun. Little gets done. Backrooms have been turned into rec rooms and meetings are seminars. We are doomed. Worse, we are bored.

No problem. In 2012 we'll have 6 guys with cigars in a back room playing poker reach a consensus on the both the democratic guys who can

• win
• do the most for his buds
• be controlled
• sound and look good for the party
• do something for the country
• get SOMETHING done
  

All in that order of priority.