At the outset of his Administration, George W. Bush set out to neutralize a key Democratic issue, education, with his No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB was a grab bag and not beloved by conservatives for its massive expansion in Federal spending in education, but it did insist on the vaguely conservative principle of accountability.

The merits of that legislation can continue to be debated, but one political outcome is clear. We don’t talk much about education at the federal level these days. There is a sense that the problem was “solved” by NCLB, which is now nearly a decade old. Likewise, no one will try to move welfare reform legislation because the successful 1996 reform law substantively and politically took the wind out of the sails of that issue.

Emphasis mine. The notion that there’s a perception, even a political perception, that education has been “solved” in this country, let alone by NCLB, leaves me completely bejabbered. Ruffini invokes education as the model from which Republicans might have mapped a plan to reach a more politically desirable set of circumstances surrounding health care while Bush was in office. That’s all fine and good, and perhaps Ruffini is on to something in his observation that good-faith Republican policy efforts peel away planks from the Democratic political platform. But invoking NCLB? Seriously?

For days, I’ve been wondering if anybody else caught that and whether I’m the only one who thinks Ruffini is completely nuts in his assessment. Today, Kevin Drum pulls numbers on NCLB and public opinion. Click here for the chart, which is worth the trip.

That’s pretty remarkable. Not only is NCLB massively unpopular a decade after it was passed, but it’s about equally unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans. Everyone hates it. If Barack Obama really wants to bring the nation together, it sounds like deep sixing NCLB completely might be a pretty good way to do it.

Very good, then. If by “solved” Ruffini means that no one favors the Bush education legacy, then we can all agree and call it a day.

Republicans on Tuesday rolled out all of the obstructionist tactics they promised as the Senate kicked off its final health care showdown, beginning 20 hours of debate on the reconciliation bill meant to amend the comprehensive legislation signed into law on Tuesday. GOP tactics to stall the measure included introducing headline-grabbing amendments to the bill (like a proposal to prohibit Viagra coverage for sex offenders), and blocking Senate business on issues unrelated to health care.

Even as the GOP pulls out all the stops . . .

Emphasis mine. Kudos to CBS for not pretending that Republican efforts today are anything but angry and political, to the point of blocking unrelated business.

The caucus electorate is a very exotic one. These are people who tend to be dedicated members of their political party, uh, party regulars, party loyalists. In the Democratic party they tend to be more liberal than the Democratic party generally. In the Republican party they tend to be more conservative than the Republican party generally.

And that’s when it dawned on me that, probably, the same can be said for protestors. By and large, people who take time to picket a government office or set up on a street corner with political signage do not reflect mainstream Americans.

Health Care Reform Protestors (image via Wikimedia Commons)

This is purely anecdotal conjecture, but Loevy’s observation about the caucus goer confirms for me the veracity of my statement about protestors. And I’m glad that it does, because the whole realization explains for me, at least in part, the vitriol and malevolence we’re seeing today in protests surrounding health care reform.

Most Americans are not as angry and mean as some of the protestors we see on the cable news, just like most Americans do not attend party caucuses. Most Americans likely also have strong feelings, one way or another, about health care reform. Most Americans, I am hopeful, still believe there’s room for respectful discussion, or even respectful argument, without such demonization of differing view points. But the protest crowd, like the caucus electorate, is a very exotic one, and more extreme in its beliefs than the party generally.

Even beyond the aggravation of the campaign phone calls, though, I start to wonder why I bother to participate in Democratic politics.

After all, if I’d wanted a health-care plan that consisted of “trying to hold on until you’re 65 and eligible for Medicare,” I’d have voted for Republicans.

If I’d wanted the United States to be involved in two shooting wars in the Middle East, I’d have voted Republican.

If I wanted to give billions of dollars to prop up Wall Street and then see huge bonuses given to the same people who got us into this financial mess, I’d vote for Republicans.

If I wanted U.S. intelligence activities (performed in our name and with our money) to continue to operate without meaningful congressional oversight, I’d vote Republican.

If I wanted accused terrorists to be tried as warriors before military tribunals as if they were soldiers, instead of in civilian courts like the criminals they are, I’d vote Republican.

If I wanted the USA Patriot Act extended rather than repealed, I’d vote for Republicans.

If I wanted theocrats in Texas to require that the American history textbooks used in public schools focus on John Calvin (who wasn’t even an American) and ignore Thomas Jefferson, I’d vote Republican.

It does force one to recognize, ultimately, how close to center the Democrat establishment has hewn since Barack Obama’s watershed election. Quillen’s commentary also–albeit incidentally–highlights the slowness of substantive institutional change in our nation’s politics.

Ed Quillen’s piece today makes no room for incrementalism, and I think that’s an oversight too common among progressives right now. Of course, Democrats lined the National Mall and stood before TV sets on January 20, 2009, and many of us wept. After eight years of global shame, Democratic Americans held their heads high with their president; yet little could we have imagined the storm of obstruction and vitriol preparing to seize the nation’s capitol.

Quillen is right, of course, and he makes each of us scratch our heads and mutter “Damn.” Damn, because one politician is, arguably, never so very different from another politician. Damn, because yesterday’s tired policies become today’s tired policies. Damn, because Washington process, by necessity, given our parliamentary checks and balances, waters down meaningful policy before it ever gets the chance to become meaningful legislation.

And yet incremental changes do take place in Washington and do spread district by district across the nation. To agree too wholeheartedly with Quillen is to forget that, in his first year or so in office, Obama oversaw expansion of children’s health insurance; sent stimulus funding directly to support social safety net institutions such as Medicaid and COBRA; allocated nearly $140 billion in funding for education; signed legislation insisting that, by 2016, all vehicles sold in the U.S. get 35+ miles to the gallon; designated 2 million acres of new federally protected wild lands; signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; began direct efforts to strengthen and update the national infrastructure (highways, rail, Internet, and more); initiated DADT repeal; and a whole lot more.*

Yes, Quillen makes a great point. Guantanamo ought to have been shuttered by now. Health insurance reform ought to have passed by now. Troops ought to have come home–not only from Iraq but also from Afghanistan–by now. No Child Left Behind ought to have been completely scrapped by now.

It’s sad that these things haven’t happened, and it’s incredibly frustrating. But make no mistake: incremental change is change. And given the extraordinary leverages afforded minority parties under current congressional rules, incremental change is about all the change we can hope for. Don’t lose sight, Democrats, of the good things that are still happening in politics today.

*List copped almost exclusively from Nathan Newman’s rundown last fall at TPM Cafe.

Yglesias shows us how Chuck Todd’s analysis during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary was crucial to understanding the substance behind the incoming poll results. After praising Todd, Yglesias continues:

It was great stuff. But obviously it’s not Election Day every day. There’s all this governing that happens and that’s important mostly because of its impact on the lives of ordinary people who themselves are probably fairly indifferent to politics.

And, unfortunately, that’s where the post ends. It’s a good post, but not a complete post. What I wish is that Matt Yglesias had taken his thought one step further: Chuck Todd (and the media) ought to be as excited about explaining the substance behind governance and policy as he (and it) is when explicating poll results. Because, arguably, what happens between election days is more important to more people than anything that actually happens on Election Day.