A lthough House Republicans and Democrats have been busy trying to destroy each other, their leaders continue to talk about the importance of bipartisan cooperation. Their rhetoric sounds wonderful, of course, and has the usual establishment pundits panting in anticipation. But centrist government would actually be a prescription for failure.
Some problems essentially have no political solution.
Almost everyone today recognizes that crime, drug abuse and family breakup are, at root, matters of moral conviction and action. But centrist solutions utilizing modest doses of coercion will not re-create respect for the lives and property of others. For example, mandatory voluntarism, an oxymoron imposed by the state of Maryland on its high school students, will not yield a generation dedicated to serving the disadvantaged. And so on. Minor modifications of the status quo, the usual penny-ante changes that are the staple of Washington pragmatists, are almost always at best a waste of time.