Bigamy with the Two Political Extremes — David Brooks’ Idea on How to Deal with Stalemated Polarization

© 2010 Peter Free

 

17 December 2010

 

 

If you can’t beat ‘em with moderation, join their insanities together and ride an erratic horse

 

Columnist David Brooks, consistently a sane proponent of conservative common sense, yesterday set out an apt way to do something a little radical about our polarization stalemate.

 

Hypothetically advising President Obama, Mr. Brooks said:

 

The general approach should be to offer the left something it really craves. Then offer the right something it really craves. Then, once you get them watering at the mouth, tell them they’re going to have to bend on the things they don’t care about in order to get the things they do. . . .

 

In a polarized country, it may be easier to push through big change by marrying the left and the right than by relying upon an unfortunately weak vital center.

 

© 2010 David Brooks, Bigger Is Easier, New York Times (16 December 2010)

 

Given the inanities of politics, this would most probably inject skip-hop lunacies (taken from our political fringes) into law, in place of the vacuum left by the unmotivated (or disappeared) American center.

 

Given our national stagnation, I wouldn’t object to that.  Bucking broncos are more fun than rotting obstruction carcasses infested with plutocratic maggots and dying flies.

 

With luck, our rodeo course might smash our nation’s head often and soundly enough to knock some sense into it.

 

Or maybe not.  But, like a lot of people, I’m sick of the stagnant status quo.

 

If we’re going to national suicide, let’s parade there with panache.

 

Extremism in the face of profligate do-nothingism can’t be a vice, can it?