I am one of I'm sure many amateur political observers who's had his perspective widened in recent years by the entry of academic political scientists into the blogosphere. Jonathan Bernstein is particularly bracing, as he refracts our elected officials' day-to-day hand-to-hand combat through a lens that's a kind of PoliSci equivalent of Everything Bad is Good for You.
In A Plain Blog About Politics, Bernstein embraces the political process in all its ugly, necessary glory: the posturing, the pandering, the packaging, the parliamentary maneuvering, the horse-trading, the struggle for survival and the ambition that drives it. His approach can alternately seem extremely cynical, in that it assumes that politicians are motivated almost entirely by the drive to amass and keep power, and the the opposite of cynical, since it embraces the process and its outcomes so cheerfully.
There's a problem, though, with this admittedly liberating enthusiasm for sausage-making. Sometimes Bernstein seems to suggest not that the ends justify the means, but that the means determine the ends, and rightly so.
There is something oddly reassuring in Bernstein's clinical admiration for the GOP's obstructionism of the past two years. The underlying assumptions are that the game is eternal, there are no permanent winners, a rough policy balance emerges from the never-ending death match, and that policy results, once manifest (a big open question embedded there), affect the players' political fortunes far more than the short-term spin battles.
Not so reassuring, but often illuminating, is Bernstein's read on political calculations that may advance a party's (or individual's interest) whether or not it's at cross-purposes with the actor's own beliefs or with policy results viewed from any but the most extreme perspective. Here for example is his contrarian take on the Republican leadership's "defeat" over the New Start treaty:
However, Republicans did accomplish something by fighting on New START. They chewed up quite a few hours of Senate floor time, a very valuable commodity in the lame duck session, and really throughout the 111th Congress. Now, there's really no way of knowing what exactly they gained by doing that. However, had they agreed to a quick vote on the treaty, there would have been more time for the Democrats to confirm judges and executive branch appointments; more time for appropriations bills, and perhaps to give a more sustained effort on the omnibus appropriations bill; and more time for any of the other unfinished business on the Democratic agenda.
So I wouldn't be quick to conclude that it was a mistake for Republicans to fight this one out, even if they took a (very minor) PR hit in losing. Indeed, in understanding what the GOP was up to, I think one has to consider the possibility that treaty opposition was in part a deliberate -- and, I would say, perfectly legitimate -- part of trying to run out the clock.
