I won’t say it often, but today’s Washington Post column from David Broder offers stellar analysis. Referring to an article in the latest issue of National Affairs, Broder explains why any attempts to implement grandiose, centrally planned policy agendas will always be in conflict with that pesky thing known as the U.S. Constitution.
The progressives believed that the cure [for the role interest-group politics plays in slowing social-engineering schemes] lay in applying the new
wisdom of the social sciences to the art of government, an approach in
which facts would heal the clash of ideologies and narrow
constituencies.
Obama — a highly intelligent product of elite universities — is
far from the first Democratic president to subscribe to this approach.
Jimmy Carter, and especially Bill Clinton, attempted to govern this
way. But Obama has made it even more explicit, regularly proclaiming
his determination to rely on rational analysis, rather than narrow
decisions, on everything from missile defense to Afghanistan — and all
the big issues at home.
Broder concludes:
Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the
progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to admit. No wonder
they are so often frustrated.
Read the whole thing.
