Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

In a speech transcript from 2013, she said that negotiating deals sometimes requires "a public and a private position" to get things done. That fed into suspicions Clinton is not always straight with voters about what she wants to accomplish.

You know, that illustrates how far we've come in the past 25 or 30 years. And the changes haven't been good. Back then, no one in either party would have raised an eyebrow at a similar statement. Planks were added to party platforms in the full knowledge they'd never be hammered into law. Individual politicians presented policies to their constituents they knew would never be implemented without considerable revision.

Not many people objected. Politics is, after all, the art of compromise. But in recent years, both parties--but particularly the Republicans, thanks in large part to Tea Party fanatics elected to office--have become increasingly obstructionist. Healthy, useful compromise has gone out the window, replaced by obduracy.

And as a result, not much gets done these days. It seems "This is my public position, and this is what I might be willing to concede to get this law passed" has been replaced by "It's my way or the highway".

That is not a good thing.