March 3, 2010

Scott Brown broke Washington

By: AF Editors

Scott_Brown_NYTM_Cover

As recently as January 18, the day before Scott Brown’s election, there was no firm consensus that Washington was broken. Now it is a staple of high-minded conversation. Imagine for a moment, that instead of Scott Brown, Massachusetts voters had elected Sen. Martha Coakley.

The House and Senate would’ve worked out a compromise on healthcare and Obama would’ve signed the titanic bill into law. The conversation we’d be having now would be about the merits of that bill. No one would be saying that Washington was broken, except perhaps for Tea Partiers and embittered Republicans.

What is the point of all this speculation? To show how superficial today’s conventional wisdom now is. Washington isn’t broken. One major reform bill failed. Partisan feelings are intense. Each side blames the other. That’s how democracy works.

Strangely, the Times Magazine profile of Sen. Brown doesn’t go into any of this. For some reason, the magazine of the paper of record has run a cover story that focuses mainly on Senator Sexy’s modeling career. Admittedly, the profile is entertaining. It turns out that Brown, like George Costanza, was a hand model.

If I were Brown’s communications staff, this is exactly the profile I’d want to see. Lots of human interest material, no substantive criticism. But what I want to know about are Brown’s ideas and how his election changed the political climate. He arrived in town, and now everybody says the town is broken.

The irony here is that even if the success of Scott Brown and the GOP has been cast as a breakdown, the Democrats will pay the price. The party in power tends to suffer when everybody agrees that Washington is broken.