I didn't know Fallows had written that, but I've been complaining for years about how the media treat one side's issues as political gamesmanship, while the other side's positions get presented at face value. It would be interesting to do a search for all the times the media spoke of President Clinton's "priorities" being a matter of concern to him, while the Republican positions were described as "ploys" or "strategies."

On the upside, there is one thing that the news now has that it did not have in 1996: exciting jet sounds between segments.

Yeah, back in 1996 I thought Newt and his guys were going to implement all of the policies they promised. They made some progress, but around that year they started to give up and profit on their positions in power.

Now it turns out that the Republicans in power are not on the Republican party's side, they are on their side.

As for the political gamesmanship, I find you can get rid of much of that if you fast-forward through all the segments where George Will isn't commenting.

By the way, I was kidding about the jet noises. They're not that exciting. Also, it might be interesting to see the presentation of news changed to mirror the presentation of sports, but it would be a bad idea.

I wasn't politically aware enough in 1996 to know whether it was truly a more enlightened time of statesmanship (doubtful), but we know for certain that Karl Rove bankrupted the GOP's policy agenda when he tried to use it to create a permanent governing majority.

1996 wasn't all that much better, trust me. Dick Armey, the GOP majority leader at that time, was the guy who coined the phrase, "bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

And I'd suggest that Karl Rove may not be the guy who came up with the idea of using policy to create a permanent governing majority. When Bush decided to run for president in 1998, Karl Rove went to right wing ward boss Grover Norquist for his blessing. Bush/Rove got that blessings in exchange for promises to push for broad income-tax cuts, school choice, Social Security privatization, tort reform, and free trade. And not just for ideological reasons. Norquist spells it right out: "You want to make your team bigger and their team shorter. And the trial lawyers fund their team, labor unions fund their team, city tax collectors fund their team." Norquist saw an opportunity to not just make the other team smaller, but to take it down entirely: tax cuts for the rich would bring in big GOP campaign $$$, tort reform undercuts trial lawyers (big Dem support base), school choice undermines the treachers' union (big Dem support base), free trade threatens labor unions (big Dem support base). Privatising Social Security would have eliminated one of the most successful Democratic government programs in history and probably would have been the final nail in the Dems' coffin. Norquist was also one of the architects of the K Street Project.

One cannot put the entire blame on the media for the toxic levels of theatre we see in politics today.

I entirely agree, although it would be refreshing to see them acknowlege their fair share. For entirely how toxic those levels have gotten, I'd recommend reading Glenn Greenwald's series in Salon on what happened behind the scene at Time Magazine over the the as-of-yet unaddresssed errors in pundit Joe Klein's now notorious FISA column from two weeks ago.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/04/time/index.html

And not just for ideological reasons. Norquist spells it right out: "You want to make your team bigger and their team shorter. And the trial lawyers fund their team, labor unions fund their team, city tax collectors fund their team."

The assumption here seems to be that if policies are implemented that hurt trial lawyers, labor unions, and tax collectors, those folks will stop donating to Democrats. I could see that being true if the Democrats implemented those policies, but not if it's the Republicans who implemented them.

Norquist's idea is that they will _have less money_ to donate to Democrats.

That may be his idea, but I still think it's overly simplistic. Even if some Democratic donors end up with less expendable cash due to certain policy changes, they are going to be even more motivated to donate. Norquist's strategy is only likely to work if his favored policy changes result in permanent, severe income reductions for a large portion of the Democratic base.

That sounds about right to me. Hey, it would hardly be the first utterly misguided belief that Norquist has had....

Sorry, that might have been ambiguous: I'm agreeing with Eric that Norquist's reasoning is predicated on some bad presuppositions.