@diegueno when working on the web, you use links at the point of reference. This is not a high school writing format.

— Doo Doo Economics (@DooDooEcon) May 17, 2012

This aspect of the liberal style expresses itself as a persistent desire to improve not just policy but politics itself. Progressivism developed a century ago out of a desire to cleanse politics of bosses and transactionalism....

• log rolling or
• legislating on behalf of paying constituencies

...Republicans are focused only on dismantling government, and the great movements to reform politics have all come from the left. Some liberals attribute their disappointment in Obama to the excessive hopes he raised about representing better, cleaner, more uplifting politics. But the euphoria surrounding Obama’s election differed only in degree from that of previous presidents. Clinton was the Man From Hope, touring the country with Al Gore and promising the renewing spirit of a younger generation. Carter frequently pledged, “I will never lie to you,” and moved the 1976 Democratic convention hall to tears.

The reality of governing can never fulfill this hoped-for version, and so inevitably liberals recoil. Chris Matthews, who famously thrilled to Obama’s inspirational rhetoric, now complains, “Word is out that Obama is a ‘transactional’ politician.” Jon Stewart put it in even more anguished terms, expressing his disappointment that politics itself did not change under Obama: “He ran on this idea that the system and the methodology are corrupt. It felt like the country was upset enough that he had the momentum needed to reevaluate how business is done. Instead, when he got elected, he acted as though the system is so entrenched that it has to be managed.”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., writing in 1949, assailed liberal idealists who were abandoning Truman for the millennial promises of Henry Wallace and his Progressive Party. Schlesinger defined this impulse as a “fear … of making concrete decisions and being held to account for concrete consequences.” Schlesinger was writing about the left, but his description applies just as well to centrists. Indeed, the unhappy moderate liberals may be the most irrational component of Obama’s let-down supporters. Enraged left-wing bloggers may harbor unrealistic notions of what Democrats could achieve, but they are at least correct that Obama does not fully share their goals.

Whatever label you use, the right has gained control of the framing, and framing controls cognitive function. Cognition does not require logic. Those who have been watching the Republican debates have been able to witness cognitive activity that is almost totally devoid of logic, yet the candidates have been well versed on framing. It is the moral worldview of freedom from government that prevails, while dismissing the logic of the great benefits that we receive as a people joining together to establish and operate our own government. This worldview allows them to dismiss the obvious logic of an improved Medicare program that would cover everyone.

We do need to recapture the framing from the conservative ideologues who would destroy as much government functioning as they can. Why they would is beyond the capacity of many of us to understand, but then we are looking for logic where it may not exist.