Without Weinergate, would this bunch of pols be any more likely, or more able, to deal with real-world problems?

"Big numbers are thrown around -- Sen. Jon Kyl said Tuesday that Republican agreement to raising the debt ceiling would require $2.5 trillion in spending cuts -- with little inquiry as to how such reductions would affect actual people, future economic growth or our capacity to invest in ourselves. Ah, but trying to answer such questions would distract us from the Weiner story.

"Okay, most of us will always pay attention to sex stories, and apocalyptic fears are usually a form of paranoia. But we’re a superpower with big economic problems. We’re acting like a country that has all the time in the world to dance around our troubles by indulging in ideological fantasies and focusing on the behavioral fantasies of wayward politicians -- who, by the way, keep creating opportunities for distraction."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his WaPo column today,
"Anthony Weiner and the tweet road to oblivion"

"Obama knows -- and, indeed, has stated as much -- that if we continue along our present path we’ll guarantee our children a much more dangerous future. Taking the steps that would reduce the risks of climate change is not going to be politically popular, which is why it is the President’s obligation to press for them."

-- Elizabeth Kolbert, in a New Yorker
"Comment" piece this week, "Storms Brewing"

by Ken

It happens every election cycle. Serious people wail about candidates' failure to engage with real issues. Yet the infotainment noozemedia devote roughly 99 percent of their attnetion to mindless sound bites, sensationalism, and horse-race prognostication, leaving any poor sap of a candidate who fantasized about "running on the issues" to face the fact that approximately nobody gives a damn.

Case in point: I don't know how anyone could run a more issues-rich or issues-intelligent campaign than then-Rep. Joe Sestak did last year in the Pennsylvania Senate race, against a candidate who is a pile of pure garbage, a cynical rich-guy opportunist who ran on a platform that said basically: "I'm betting that enough Pennsylvanians are rich opportunists, low-life slimeballs, or garden-variety morons." It turned out to be a winning bet, and I don't suppose we should be surprised.

But I digress. I know I promised last night ("Confidential to Anthony W. of Brooklyn -- you twit!") that "barring unforeseen circumstances" we would be talking tonight about the results of New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff's online quest for a viable universal cartoon caption -- suitable, for example, for the magazine's much-cherished weekly cartoon-caption contest. I don't know if you could call the developments that have developed since then exactly "unforeseen." Did anyone foresee the circus surrounding Congressman Anthony W. of Brooklyn fading into the night.

True, there is one "unforeseen development." No, I don't mean the tacky disclosure that Mrs. Weiner is pregnant with the couple's first child, which you'd like to think was pretty much their affair. (It was interesting to note, though, that there wasn't any steadfast "little woman" at Anthony W.'s side as he continued blundering his way through his mess.) No, I mean the still-unconfirmed report of the congressman's resignation -- to run for premier of Italy.

BOROWITZ REPORT
June 9, 2011

Weiner Resigns: Will Run for
Prime Minister of Italy

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - Embattled congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) sent shockwaves across the political landscape today, resigning from his seat in Congress and announcing a run for Prime Minister of Italy.



“Today is bittersweet for me,” he said in a resignation speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.  “But it is time to say goodbye to the past and buongiorno to the future.”



Mr. Weiner said that before resigning his seat, he briefly considered running for Prime Minister of Italy while still serving in the House: “I’ve shown that I’m good at multitasking.”



But instead, Mr. Weiner decided to devote himself wholeheartedly to his new campaign: “I’m very excited about this, as all of my followers on Twitter can see.”



Mr. Weiner hit the ground running this morning, blasting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for his use of prostitutes: “As Prime Minister of Italy, I will bring with me a much more fiscally prudent approach.”



According to early Italian polls, Mr. Weiner is appealing mainly to women in the 21 to 22 demographic.



“That’s a group that Berlusconi has totally ignored,” said Italian pollster Donatello Bibbo.  “He considers them too old.”



BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS . . .

"Now, I am always wary of those who do what I’m about to do next: Take a tawdry sex scandal that people read about because we like to read about tawdry sex scandals, and use it to make some larger point."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in the above-cited column

It's easy enough to understand E.J.'s wariness, but I find that the people you usually have to worry about are the ones who aren't wary about such dangers.

What's got E.J. down isn't the Weiner story itself, but its place "at the end of what Thomas Jefferson might call 'a long train of abuses.' You really don wonder what's happening to our democracy and those who serve it."

[T]he Weiner episode marked the culmination of several months during which other sideshows involving outrageous male behavior -- John Ensign and John Edwards come to mind — dominated news coverage at a moment when our country’s future really is on the line. (Bill Clinton’s scandal played out when we were in very good shape, which is one reason he survived.)

Add to this the political media’s tendency to prefer covering personalities that the media created in the first place (Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, above all) to those taking the trouble of running for president and thinking through what they want to say. It’s another case of politicians being reduced (or, maybe, reducing themselves) to celebrities.

I have no particular sympathy for the political views of Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty or Rick Santorum, but at least the three of them are doing the hard work that democratic politics requires. Thus: Palin’s unusual comments about Paul Revere got far more attention than did Pawlenty’s economic speech this week. It fell to policy bloggers such as The Post’s Ezra Klein to take Pawlenty’s ideas apart. Thus: Palin’s bus trip to the New Hampshire seacoast got at least as much attention as Romney’s announcement of a real, live candidacy.

"But it’s not all the media’s fault," E.J. says,

and this is not just about politicians who conduct themselves badly in their personal lives. Much of what passes for debate consists of irritable ideological gestures. The recent disappointing economic news has not changed the set-piece Washington deficit debate one bit.

Big numbers are thrown around -- Sen. Jon Kyl said Tuesday that Republican agreement to raising the debt ceiling would require $2.5 trillion in spending cuts — with little inquiry as to how such reductions would affect actual people, future economic growth or our capacity to invest in ourselves. Ah, but trying to answer such questions would distract us from the Weiner story.

The cruel fact is that we now have a politics that is almost totally divorced from real-world problems, except insofar as those problems can be mangled beyond recognition by pols who behave as if their brains function at a barely pre-kindergarten level. (The game of figuring out whether they're too stupid to understand or merely too demagogically cynical or opportunistic has long since lost its charm.)

In this week's (June 13) New Yorker Elizabeth Kolbert has a timely "Comment" piece called "Storms Brewing," in which she writes:

For decades, climate scientists have predicted that, as global temperatures rose, the side effects would include deeper droughts, more intense flooding, and more ferocious storms. The details of these forecasts are immensely complicated, but the underlying science is pretty simple. Warm air can hold more moisture. This means that there is greater evaporation. It also means that there is more water, and hence more energy, available to the system.

What we are seeing now is these predictions being borne out. If no particular flood or drought or storm can be directly attributed to climate change—there’s always the possibility that any single event was just a random occurrence—the over-all trend toward more extreme weather follows from the heating of the earth. As the cover of Newsweek declared last week, “weather panic” is the “new normal.” The larger problem is that this “new normal” won’t last.

The evidence continues to accumulate, Kolbert writes, that we're running out of time to get any kind of control over these developments. She points out that Barack Obama 'appointed some of the country's most knowledgeable climate scientists to his Administration, and it seemed for a time as if he might take his responsibility to lead on this issue seriously. That hope has faded."

Of course, it almost goes without saying at this point that the President’s potential opponents next November are all worse on the issue. Tim Pawlenty, who, as governor of Minnesota, took some commendable actions on climate change, has now renounced them, saying that everyone “has got some clunkers in their record.” Much the same holds for the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, minus the commendable actions. National Journal has summed up the situation this way: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe.”

E. J. Dionne Jr. extrapolates from the "Weiner circus":

Social networking has taken us where human nature always threatesn to go: downward. Do we want to give politicians incentives to limit their thinking to 140 characters?

And he concludes toady's column:

Britney Spears, appropriately enough I suppose, has a catchy song out with the refrain “Keep on dancin’ till the world ends.” Forgive me for wondering whether her song will provide the soundtrack for some future documentary on our national decline if we don’t get very serious, very soon.

Meanwhile Elizabeth Kolbert concludes her "Storms Brewing" piece:

[N]ow that the immediate crisis has passed, the President needs to stop asking the kind of questions that can’t be answered and start addressing those that can. Obama knows—and, indeed, has stated as much—that if we continue along our present path we’ll guarantee our children a much more dangerous future. Taking the steps that would reduce the risks of climate change is not going to be politically popular, which is why it is the President’s obligation to press for them. It may be beyond our power to control the climate, but we can determine it. This is precisely what we’re doing right now, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.