White House Looks Down on America

From the WA Times. This is what happens when a policy wonk doesn't get the cooperation he thinks he deserves.

"Obama administration officials say in all seriousness that the economy is better than it seems, if only people were smart enough to get it.

The same condescending attitude pervades portrayals of the midterm election as a "revolt of the masses," as if peasants wielding torches and copies of the Constitution were marching on the ivory towers of Washington."

...

"If there's one thing that progressives can never admit to themselves, it's their own unpopularity. So they seek solace in rationalization. This week, Vice President Joe Biden asserted that it was "just too hard to explain" the administration's many accomplishments, presumably because he thinks the American people are too unsophisticated to understand."

...

"It's not so much that the masses are revolting as that we are seeing the return of the traditional citizen legislator, the nonprofessional politician who comes to Washington for a brief round of public service before resuming a private life. It is the model of Cincinnatus and George Washington, of the Minutemen and Davy Crockett. The diverse group of new candidates standing in this election more accurately mirrors the American people than the doddering representatives of the ancien regime.

The coming election is not a contest between an all-knowing ruling class victimized by bad marketing and an ignorant mass of angry, misinformed troglodytes. It is a referendum on a vision of government and society in which the state seeks unlimited power to make decisions at the expense of the liberty of the people. It is a moment of decision on a failed experiment in governance. If the Obama administration's accomplishments are too complex to explain to the voters, if the beneficial effects of their policies are not self-evident, it may be time for them to question whether they have accomplished anything worthwhile at all."

According to Cass Sunsteen, there's a little bit of Homer Simpson in all of us--I just wonder if he knows that includes HIM.