How to Make Something Controversial
People say the media is more viscerally sympathetic to Democrats than Republicans. But working in the other direction is the fact that Republicans understand the media much better than Democrats do. Take the reconciliation process. The media is giving blanket coverage to this “controversial” procedure being used by the Democrats. But using reconciliation for a few fixes and tweaks isn’t controversial historically, and it’s not controversial procedurally. It’s only controversial because Republicans are saying it is. Which is good enough, as it turns out. In our political system, if Democrats and Republicans are yelling at each other over something, then for the media, that is, by definition, controversy. This is something Democrats did not understand when George W. Bush was in power.
The Senate reconciliation vote occurred on May 23, 2003. In the month of May, only one New York Times article so much as mentioned the use of reconciliation for the tax cuts — a May 13, 2003, article that devoted a few paragraphs to wrangling over whether Senate Republicans could assign the bill number they wanted (S.2) to a bill approved via reconciliation. The Times also used the word “reconciliation” in a May 9, 2003, editorial, but gave no indication whatsoever of what it meant.
And that’s more attention than most news outlets gave to the use of reconciliation that month. The Washington Post didn’t run a single article, column, editorial, or letter to the editor that used the words “reconciliation” and “senate.” Not one. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press were similarly silent.
Cable news didn’t care, either. CNN ran a quote by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley about the substance of the tax cuts in which he used the word “reconciliation” in passing — but that was it. Fox News aired two interviews in which Republican members of Congress referred to the reconciliation process in order to explain why the tax cuts would be temporary, but neither they nor the reporters interviewing them treated reconciliation as a controversial tactic.
And ABC, CBS, NBC? Nothing, nothing, nothing.
And why was there nothing? Because Democrats weren’t complaining. The tax cuts might have been controversial, but they weren’t creative enough to polarize the procedure the Bush administration was using to pass them.
But some of the credit for that has to go to the Bush administration, which took seriously the need to institutionalize reconciliation when they were strong and popular rather than weakened. When Bush came into office, he used reconciliation for his first tax cuts. That was a sharp break with precedent: Reconciliation had never been used to increase the deficit, and the process was so poorly suited to the purpose that the Bush administration had to let all of them sunset after 10 years. It was a bizarre, bizarre bill. But by using it for his popular first round of tax cuts, Bush normalized it such that Democrats couldn’t really complain when he used it for his much more controversial second round of tax cuts.
By Ezra Klein | March 5, 2010; 9:53 AM ET
Health Reform-The Dream Shall Never Die
Just less than an hour ago, the Senate passed the most significant health legislation in the last ten years. This is an extra ordinary achievement for a body that at times, can become so entrenched in serving it’s own interests. With the attitude of “deny, delay and obstruct” by the minority, this round of debates was no exception to that trend. Last night, millions of Americans went to bed with the weight of fear and insecurity on their shoulders. On this Christmas Eve morning, that weight is just a little bit lighter.
Many across the land have been and contnue to be opposed to any tinkering of the current health system structure. While the passage of this Senate bill is in no way an end-all resolution for the many ills of our current system, it certainly represents a hugh step in the right direction. This mornings vote, in conjunction with the recent passage of the House bill, shows that progress is not impossible.
After at least 40 years of standing still, or even regressing in other years, it is now possible to do something definitive to prevent the deaths of 45, 000 Americans each year. I am betting that invariably both the House and Senate will do the right thing. We can no longer continue the failures of our recent history.
The cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.
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