Flitting hither and thither on the Internet, I came upon this article, by Michael Kinsley, which I think adds to the case against the Star Tribune commentator, discussed here, who detects in the outcome of the recent election evidence of the sublime good judgment of the Minnesota electorate. It might seem contradictory to want Republicans, running on no new taxes no matter what, to control the state legislature, while at the same time choosing for governor DFLer Mark Dayton, whose plan for the state budget deficit is universally and dubiously described as "soak the rich." But, no:
With a wisdom both remarkable and fundamental to our American way of life, Minnesotans announced that they wanted the kind of serious government reform that is now central to the agenda of the GOP, but that they wanted it done with compassion and caring, the hallmarks of Mark Dayton's career in public service.
[S]trangely and unfashionably, I find myself more optimistic about the possibilities of progress in government than I have been for a very long time.
All thanks to the voters.
Kinsley:
A recent Yahoo poll (and I resist the obvious joke here) found that 75 percent of Americans believe that the United States is "the greatest country in the world." Does any other electorate demand such constant reassurance about how wonderful it is--and how wise? Having spent a month to a couple of years and many millions of dollars trying to snooker voters, politicians awaiting poll results Tuesday will declare that they put their faith in "the fundamental wisdom of the American people."
Not me. Democracy requires me to respect the results of the election. It doesn't require me to agree with them or admire the process by which voters made up their minds. . . .
Everybody will be talking in the next few days about the "message" of the elections. They mean, of course, the message from the voters. This is one of the treasured conventions of political journalism. Yesterday, the story was all about artifice and manipulation, the possible effect of the latest attack ad or absurd lie. Today, all that melts away. The election results are deemed to reflect grand historical trends. But my colleague Joe Scarborough got it right in these pages last week when he argued that the 2010 elections, for all their passion and vitriol, are basically irrelevant. Some people are voting Tuesday for calorie-free chocolate cake, and some are voting for fat-free ice cream. Neither option is actually available.
I will stop there. The whole column is excellent. It would appear from the comments that Kinsley struck a nerve. Patriotism is the first resort of a scoundrel, and scoundrels do not like being told they're nothing special. The professional commentators are no less flummoxed. Kinsley mentions in the column Newt Gingrich, who says that, according to "leftists," we are no longer "the Americans of the frontier, the sturdy, independent farmers." Well, we aren't. That was a romanticized then, this is now. Gingrich, as Kinsley observes, might as well join us non-cherishers, because what he professes to cherish is gone. It's like cherishing the Republican party on account of Lincoln, a sign of determined stupidity.
Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg thinks Kinsley is wrong because de Tocqueville says so in his book on American exceptionalism, published in 1835.
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