E. J. Dionne writes about what we’ve talked about repeatedly here, the silly procedural focus of our national political dialog:
A deep narrative is taking root in the political class, and it goes something like this: Obama is biting off way more than he can chew, “overloading” the system and dealing with all sorts of “side issues,” when he should be focusing solely on the broken economy. He is said to be asking Congress to do too much.
Note that anyone who makes an argument of this sort is freed from responsibility to mention any of the specific problems Obama is proposing to take on. Insisting the economy trumps everything means you don’t have to say a thing about health-care reform, energy, education and taxes.
I have no idea if Dionne got the idea of writing about this from the blogosphere, but this is an important media critique that I hope we’ll see more of.