In critiquing President Obama's healthcare address in today's Washington Post, David Broder makes an interesting admission:
The keynote was simple and almost substance-free: "The time for bickering is over."Got that? Calls for Democrats and Republicans (or Democrats and Democrats, as the case may be) to "just get along," calls we hear incessantly from Broderite journalists, are "substance-free." Our politics are defined by the very real, very meaningful disagreements they seek to mediate. By debating the issues, our democracy works toward achieving meaningful consensus. To ask politicians to quit bickering is to ask them to ignore the substantial issues of the day.
That is what Broder is saying here. Right?
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