In an article on
Vox, Matthew Yglesias has a sort of apology for Mike Pence, but not in the way the title suggests. I agree with much of the article and it is very good - you should read the whole thing. One of my favorite parts:
"What now surprises me is when I come across a member of Congress who really does
understand a particular issue in detail. And this sometimes does
happen. Little pockets of expertise are scattered hither and yon all
throughout Capitol Hill — especially when members dig in to work on
idiosyncratic pieces of legislation that are off the radar of big-time
partisan conflict. But on most issues, most of the time, most members of
Congress are more or less blindly following talking points that they
got from somewhere else and that they don’t really understand.
Members form identities as a certain kind of politician —
a New Democrat or a progressive, a leadership ally or a rock-ribbed
true conservative — and then they take cues from how a politician like
that ought to respond to the controversy of the day, and their staff
hastily assembles some stuff to say about it."
I am regularly disappointed when I listen to elected officials spout off the same garbage based off of the same dubious arguments (if they even bother trying to provide any justification at all) that I hear on talk radio.
Talk radio is our intellectual hurdle for policy?! With such a high bar for public service, no wonder we have such brilliant minds running this country.
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