And ponies. And oatmeal raisin cookies. And sunsets. And walks on the beach.

But can anybody give me just one single example of where "changing the tone" in Washington did anything other than make life a little more pleasant for Villagers waiting in line together for their cocktail wienies?

The New Deal? Not. Civil Rights? Not. Medicare/Medicaid? Not.

In fact, I'd argue that the reverse is true -- It's when all official Washington agrees on something that they drive the country into a ditch. Iraq? Done by consensus (thanks, Tom Daschle!) Patriot Act? Ditto. Bush tax cuts for the rich? Ditto. NCLB? Ditto. Heck, Viet Nam. And on and on and on.

What's needed is more conflict, not less. Krugman:

[T]he part that really got me was Broder saying that we need “the best ideas from both parties.”

You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad.

Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground.

So, if consensus is Obama's ultimate goal, he has to become a Republican. There's no other way. (See Digby on Lincoln's Cooper Union speech: "Silence will not be tolerated --we must place ourselves avowedly with them.")

Unfortunately for Obama, the Village isn't Chicago. There really are ideological differences, which people are well funded to create, and there really are clashing interests, instead of a single, tight little "Chicago Way" oligarchy, where the only consensus that needs to take place is which little piglet gets the front tit. Conflict, sure, but linear, and at the end of the day everybody lines up. But that's Triple-A ball. This is the show.

Cookies may make the Village happier, but they won't help us at all. My political browser doesn't do cookies.

Obama openly taking our side might help*, even if its only on the level of optics. You know, listening tour, town meetings, boring bullet points about policy. Oh, wait...

NOTE * And not with pissant stuff like executive compensation, either. What are we, stupid? If Obama really wanted that to happen, he would have written it into the original bill, which the Dems passed over Republican opposition, let us remember.