{"id":3741,"date":"2011-09-06T12:24:04","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T16:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3741"},"modified":"2011-09-06T12:24:04","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T16:24:04","slug":"primetime-on-the-potomac-shore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/09\/primetime-on-the-potomac-shore.html","title":{"rendered":"Primetime on The Potomac Shore"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rep.<\/a>
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NY Times columnist Joe Nocera recounts the tale of whom he calls the last moderate<\/a> in Congress.\u00a0 Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) is an unabashed Blue-Dog Democrat with a sobering perspective on the dysfunction that exists under the Capitol Dome.<\/p>\n

To Cooper, the true villain is not the Tea Party; it\u2019s Newt Gingrich. In the 1980s, when Tip O\u2019Neill was speaker of the House, \u201cCongress was functional,\u201d Cooper told me. \u201cCommittees worked. Tip saw his role as speaker of the whole House, not just the Democrats.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gingrich was a new kind of speaker: deeply partisan and startlingly power-hungry. \u201cHis first move was to get rid of the Democratic Study Group, which analyzed bills, and which was so trusted that Republicans as well as Democrats relied on it,\u201d Cooper recalled. \u201cThis was his way of preventing us from knowing what we were voting on. Today,\u201d he added, \u201cthe ignorance around here is staggering. Nobody has any idea what they\u2019re voting on.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a collegial body anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is more like gang behavior. Members walk into the chamber full of hatred. They believe the worst lies about the other side. Two senators stopped by my office just a few hours ago. Why? They had a plot to nail somebody on the other side. That\u2019s what Congress has come to.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d like to be shocked, but this is simply confirming the obvious truths we are loathe to accept… loathe because in principle the government is us. It is of, by, and for the people.\u00a0 Unfortunately, rather than the best in us, Congress has come to manifest the darkness in our souls most of us dare not show the world.<\/p>\n

In many respects, it it simply another embodiment of Reality TV…\u00a0 an endless parade of backstabbing, bitch-slapping, and name calling.\u00a0 A performance we profess to hate, but in practice, won’t turn off.\u00a0 And as much as I’d like to fault all the Congressional Snooki wannabees out there, ultimately we are the ones responsible for the “success” of The Potomac Shore.<\/p>\n

[thanks to MB for finding Nocera’s NY Times column]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Confirming the obvious truths we are loathe to accept. Unfortunately, rather than the best in us, Congress has come to manifest the darkness in our souls we typically only bare for Reality TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,89,22,41],"class_list":["post-3741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-congress","tag-democrats","tag-political-ideology","tag-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3741"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3751,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions\/3751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}