Now begins the spin

[mgc1961]

OK, so now what happens?

The midterm electorate has voted for divided government, in the apparent belief that each party can check and balance the other, in the apparent hope that both parties can somehow work together to cure the economy and other serious ills.

Fat chance. You know those summer movies where rival robots smash each other to smithereens while laying waste to vast stretches of urban real estate? The next two years in Washington are likely to be something like that.

On occasion, divided government has worked. Forty years ago, Richard Nixon worked with a Democratic Congress to enact historic measures, such as environmental protection and legal aid for the poor. In the mid-1980s, Ronald Reagan worked with a Democratic Congress to overhaul the tax code. And after Bill Clinton was waxed in the 1994 midterms, he eventually found ways to work with his Republican Congress, signing historic welfare reform and balancing the budget.

Read on at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/09/103405/now-begins-the-spin.html

[bemildred]

1. I thought it was a "throw the bums out" election.

I don't believe there was any deeper ideological content to it, though there was indeed a lot of ideological blather in the media.

[rurallib]

3. turned out to be a throw the bums in election.

[bemildred]

5. That can happen. nt

[TlalocW]

2. I knew it was bad...

But I didn't know it was Michael Bay bad...

TlalocW

[ixion]

4. Rival robots, yes. But the two are different beasts

so the whole "tear each other apart" thing is a red herring.

They won't tear each other apart. They NEED each other to survive. No, they'll tear us apart, but that's going to happen no matter who is elected, because the elected officials are serving a single group of people. Their anger is identical to the an actor playing a wrestler: much heated rhetoric and threats, but at the end of the day they hang out together. It's all theater. We, the people are the real targets, and that hasn't changed in a couple decades or more.

[bemildred]

6. Yah.

Goes back to the post-Reconstruction period (or so I've read.)

Edit: "Indispensable Enemies" -- Walter Karp