In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.
Gail: Happy New Year, David! How do you think we’re doing so far? I guess if you’re going to plunge over a cliff, it’s better to hop back up again before the end of the long holiday weekend.
David: I would say so far the start of 2013 has given new meaning to the word inauspicious. If I’d been in the House I would have been sorely tempted to vote against the fiscal cliff bill. The measure was supposed to improve our fiscal situation. It was supposed to be balanced between tax hikes and spending cuts, like the president promised. It has some tax hikes but effectively no spending cuts. In other words the law fails to fulfill both of its primary objectives. When a law fails to achieve its objectives, aren’t you supposed to vote against it?
Gail: Well, not if you’re on a cliff. I was disappointed that the White House rolled over on the $250,000 bar for tax cuts. Give me a break. It should have been $75,000 from the beginning. But we’re all supposed to make compromises, right?
I must admit that my evil side was hoping for a House rebellion. Partly because it would confirm my longstanding theory that no matter how great the political divide between the parties, the biggest hate-hate relationship in Washington is the chasm of loathing between the House and the Senate. Also, it would have been nice to see the entire nation joining in the conviction that the House Republican majority is composed of crazy people. But instead we have a triumph of reason and another disaster averted.
David: Not averted. Postponed. We’ve got another catastrophe coming in a couple of months with the return of sequestration. And by the way how is anybody in government actually supposed to plan a budget when the whole thing may blow up again in 60 days?
Gail: Wow, you really are unhappy. To be honest, I haven’t seen much serious budget planning since the Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 elections and grabbed onto the Senate filibuster. It’s not the White House’s fault that John Boehner couldn’t deliver on a bigger deal. So they’ll handle the next crisis when they get to it.
David: And by the way, the calamity for liberalism is permanent. As Ross has pointed out, liberalism now has a cataclysmic problem. Liberals need revenue to fund existing government programs, let alone any future ideas they might have. And yet at this moment, with a newly re-elected president and with Republicans in utter disarray, they could only come up with an extra $60 billion a year. They ended up with less than half of the revenue Obama hoped for and much less than Boehner reportedly offered.
The events of the past week show that even at their most powerful, Democrats cannot tax the middle class. That means no money for any future liberal projects. Republicans looked awful this week, but Democrats suffered the biggest defeat.
Gail: Sorry, that speaks to me more of the current state of the Republicans, who can’t even approve a farm bill reform their agriculture committee liked. But tell me who you think were the heroes and non-heroes of this adventure. I know you don’t like to call people villains.
On the hero side, I have to give props to Vice President Biden, who worked out the Senate deal.
David: Biden was outstanding. He was certainly more effective than President Obama, whose public announcement on Monday lobbying for a deal that was very much in doubt in the House was one of the most inept bits of governance I’ve seen in a long time. Who holds a pep rally insulting Congress at the very moment you are trying to work out a deal with them?
Biden wins points because he understands that disdain is not really the greatest negotiating technique.
Gail: It makes me think that we should have national political tickets that always include one statesman and one pol. A little like the British with their king/queen plus prime minister. You want one great national figure — that would be President Obama. And one guy who works the legislature. I am prepared to admit that when it comes to dealing with the House and Senate leaders, Obama is terrible. But he’s great with the public. Which hates the House and Senate as much as he does. And then there’s Biden, who absolutely adores all the lifetime pols, being one himself.
David: The weird thing is that Obama is a lifetime pol, too. He seems to have chosen a profession he doesn’t intrinsically love.
Gail: And double weird that he seemed to discover he loathed politics only after he left the Illinois state legislature.
David: He’s actually a bit like a senior cabinet member, who does the policy but disdains the politics. I’m reminded again of Peggy Noonan’s line that he sometimes seems to regard politics as an unpleasant duty on his path to greatness.
Gail: What does all this say about the Republicans in the House? For a minute it looked as if Eric Cantor, the deeply irritating Majority Leader, was trying to overthrow Speaker John Boehner by dramatically announcing he was opposed to the cliff-averting bill. And for a while there, Boehner did seem to be screwing up everything. But in the end, Boehner got it done – admittedly with Democratic votes.
David: The core thing it says about them is that they want to reform entitlements and cut spending, but they can’t actually propose any plans to do these things because it would be politically unpopular. This is a terrible problem for them.
Gail: My nominee for non-hero is Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. One of the tiny handful of senators who voted against the compromise. And you know it was because he thought it was safer for his presidential aspirations. He’s probably right – everybody knows you don’t get in trouble for things you vote against. But as a leader, he looked like a total weenie.
David: I have a lot of sympathy for people like him and Democratic Senator Michael Bennet, whom Maureen wrote about. At least they have their eye on the big picture, which is the country’s economic survival. If this posture helps Rubio in the primaries, sign me up.
Gail: Well, it’s only the first week of the new year. In comes a new House and Congress. On to the debt ceiling crisis and the will-the-government-shut-down crisis. By the time warm weather comes, will we feel as if the country is ungovernable? Or that we’ve turned the corner and learned how to make this thing work again? Or maybe just that we’ve gotten really good at disaster avoidance?
David: Again I’m much more glum. I’d say we’ve accelerated our trip to disaster. My big puzzle is why young people are not in the streets. They are really being hosed, sentenced to a living standard much lower than their parents because of boomer greed. I guess it’s hard when you are 25 to imagine the tax bill and the benefit cuts that will hit when you are 40, but someday interest rates will return to their normal levels and it will all come crashing down.
Gail: For years I’ve been hearing 20-somethings say they don’t expect Social Security to be around when they hit 65. Eventually, I came to realize that they really mean that they just don’t expect to be 65. Or 40. Neither did I, when I was 22. So I’m afraid it’s something that we’re going to have to work out on their behalf. Give global warming to the youth and let the creakier part of the population figure out the entitlement problem. We’ll create an entitlement cliff! Something to look forward to next New Year’s Eve.