Politics and immediate gratification

Commenting on last night's election and the prospect of fading Democratic fortunes, as well as the Republicans' own failure to cement an enduring majority five years ago, the New York Times suggests that an FDR New Deal-kind of realignment in the American political landscape is unlikely in the 21st century:

On a deeper level, the fading dream of realignment also reflects our attitudes about permanence in a society that judges its digital TVs by their “refresh rates” — that is, the number of times per second that the pixels on the screen rearrange themselves to create a more eye-popping picture than the one that just existed. In an accelerated culture, our loyalties toward just about everything — laundry detergents, celebrities, even churches and spouses — transfer more readily than our grandparents could have imagined. Now we dispose of phone carriers and cash-back credit cards from one month to the next, forever in search of some better deal. Forget the staying power of an institution like Johnny Carson; when Jay Leno starts to feels a little stale, he is shifted to prime time, then shifted back to late night. It was probably never very realistic for modern political thinkers of either party to dream of a 50-year reign. This century’s tectonic realignment is more likely to last 50 months or maybe 50 weeks, depending on how long it takes voters to seek out the latest offer or the newest best deal.

So given the magnitude and complexity of some of our problems--climate change, peak oil, and the growth of entitlement spending, particularly for healthcare--how does Washington develop enduring solutions when political power shifts so quickly?

ALSO IN THE TIMES TODAY, David Brooks draws an interesting analogy in a conversation with Gail Collins about what Democrats should do next given Scott Brown's victory last night:

Let’s say we had a year-long debate in the run-up to the Iraq war. Let’s say at the end of that debate, 33 percent of Americans thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq, 46 percent thought it was a bad idea and the rest weren’t sure. Then let’s say that there were a bunch of elections in places like New Jersey and Virginia in the middle of this debate and George Bush’s party lost them all badly. Let’s say at the end of this debate there was a senate race in Wyoming in which a Democratic candidate made preventing the war a central plank in his campaign. Let’s say Bush went out to Wyoming and told voters they had to support the Republican to save the Iraq invasion. And let’s say the Democrat still went on to win that Wyoming Senate seat by more than 5 percentage points.

Would you have advised George Bush under these circumstances to go ahead and invade Iraq? Would you have advised him to call a special lame duck session of Congress to push through a war resolution before the new senator could be seated? Would you have advised him to invent some legislative trick so he could still have his invasion? Or would you have said, George, I know you really want to invade Iraq. I know you think an invasion will do a lot of good for the world. But the American people are pretty clear about this issue. Maybe you should show a little doubt. Maybe you ought to listen and give this whole thing a second look.

FOR THE OPPOSITE POINT OF VIEW, namely that Democrats should move forward with getting healthcare reform legislation to President Obama's desk, Ezra Klein has a number of good posts today here, here, here, here, and here.