Excerpt on Super Committee failure
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): All right, now coming to, as expected and as predicted by you two last week, David, the supercommittee failed to come up with a deal before the deadline this week. Does anyone come out of this looking good?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: No.
I mean, we talked last week about the low reaction of the American people toward Congress, Americans' incredibly low faith in government. There's one thing we know that builds faith in government. It's when people come -- when the two parties come together and hammer out a deal. It's not that people want some mushy centrism.
They want constructive competition, where they fight and then they figure out where the lay of the land is and then they get the best deal they can. And people understand that this country will go into decline if we don't have a better growth-producing tax code, if we don't take care of our debt, and they want some kind of deal.
So, to me, it will create what I think is already burgeoning in this election, which was an anti-both-party mood. Both parties have become minority parties, and they're shrinking minorities, both of them.
JEFFREY BROWN: Mark, everybody looks bad?
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Well, going in, there wasn't great confidence.
Understand this. There were four members of Congress who had served on the Bowles-Simpson commission who had voted for that Bowles-Simpson commission. They were Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Republican, Mike Crapo of Idaho, a Republican, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a Democrat, and Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat.
None of the four was put on the supercommittee. There were four -- among four members on the Simpson-Bowles who voted against the Simpson-Bowles, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Max Baucus of Montana, Xavier Becerra of California, and Dave Camp of Michigan. All four of them were put on the supercommittee.
So there was a certain orthodoxy. Any deviation from what had been the party orthodoxy on either side wasn't encouraged and was discouraged. I think the Democrats came out with a slight tactical rhetorical advantage. There's a sense that they moved more, that the president tried harder, that the Republicans were more obstinate, the sense that the Republicans were more wed to protecting the wealthy.
I think, in the long run, however, it helps the Republicans. And the reason I say that is this, that it discredits government. The Democrats are, whether they choose to be or not, by historical mandate, the party of government. They believe that government can be an instrument of social justice and economic justice. And whether it's eliminating polio, putting a man on the moon, ending racial segregation, rebuilding Europe, that's what Democrats were about.
Republicans have said, no, government is not the answer. It's the problem. And I think this further erodes public confidence in government and public trust in government. In that sense, it helps the Republicans.
The old Republican Party has ALWAYS been about government-is-the-problem. But the Tea Party (the now dead Republican Party) has become the party of no-governance, total gridlock government.
As for me, even though I do NOT think of my self as a Democrat, I too believe that government CAN be an instrument of social justice and economic justice. All I have to do is look at history.
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