Link Banana

Slate’s Jack Shafer has some — unfairly? — harsh words for citizens and journalists who’ve become fans of the “post-partisanship” of Obama, Bloomberg, and Schwarzenegger.

It sounds heavenly to imagine the banishment of partisanship, gridlock, division, anger, bitterness, pettiness, catcalls, and smears from politics. But once you do that, you’ve basically ended politics, and contrary to Obama, you’ve done nothing noble. We throw dead cats and insults at one another because we have philosophical disagreements that separate us, and all the smooth talk from political pulpits occupied by Obama and Bloomberg can’t change that for long. […]

If you embrace compromise for the sake of compromise and ban division for the sake of political unity, you’re left with parties and candidates that don’t stand for anything. At that point, why should anybody want to vote for a smooth bipartisanist like Barack Obama?