Commentary

Former Senator George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic candidate for president who issued a clarion call to “Come home, America,” died earlier this week. His New York Times obituary reflected all too well the problem of image over substance in our politics, and failed — 40 years on — to appreciate the consequences of the 1972 election.

The current system clearly hasn't been so good for those to whom the benefits were supposed to trickle down. But the U.S. remains a mighty economic force, one that could push back effectively if it wished to, and cross-national cooperation could yield a mutual defense pact to protect countries from having to compete in a race to the bottom.

Having become disoriented in the fog of Corporate Uncertainty, I was trying to find my way when, suddenly, over the Fiscal Cliff I went. I plunged straight down — deeper and deeper into the abyss. I thought all was lost. But then I saw the Grand Bargain waiting for me, beckoning to me. For a moment, I rejoiced.

The Medicaid expansion portion of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act was most fundamentally a decision to reorder the relationship between the federal government and the states, a decision to subordinate the idea of nationhood to judge-made deference-to-states theory. Voters, we were told, were not savvy enough to figure out the respective roles of federal and state officials and apportion credit or blame accordingly.

A recent CBO report on the long-term budget outlook has reheated deficit hysteria. But the points of fiscal stress the CBO highlighted were misleading, its alternative budget scenarios lacked range or nuance, and its treatment of "excess" growth in health care costs cavalier.

Of all the fantasies indulged in by a society speeding toward self-destruction, none is as consequential as the idea that continuing growth has a happy-ever-after ending. But even if ever-increasing population were survivable, is it really desirable? Can't we figure out any adaptations to enable an aging society to be economically and socially robust?

The Governor has a 69 percent approval rating, totes around an adoring press corps, and has been described as the tamer of New York's dysfunctional legislature. But preventing a repeat of the state's usual gerrymandering process in this redistricting cycle was just not important enough to Cuomo. So he has broken his promise to veto cynical plans to reproduce the status quo.

As the Supreme Court looks ready to restrict or eliminate race-based affirmative action in its 2012-13 session, supporters of such preferences have a tool not yet deployed: race-based affirmative action as a means to compensate for the disproportionately negative impact of current-day "legacy admissions" policies on minority applicants.

Do all cultures celebrate cheating as much as we do? I’ll concede in advance the danger of falling into the this-is-the-worst-it-has-ever-been trap, and even acknowledge, on a moment’s reflection, that our time and place has no patent on pretense, disingenuousness, and deceit. But we are still in staggeringly bad shape.

Apple's lack of any sense of obligation to support American workers — indeed, the lack of any national loyalty at all — is appalling. Yet that’s not even the truly frightening part of the recent New York Times story. Most troubling is the broader, underlying narrative conveyed and ultimately encouraged by the story: there is nothing that America as a nation can or should do to alter the trajectory of events.