Sheppard: Cokie Roberts on Downgrade: 'The Problem That We Have Here is the Constitution'

via NewsBusters

•  In fact, the reason they like France and Great Britain is because they’re parliamentary systems where the majority gets what it wants no matter what.[ comment: Yeah, so did Nazi Germany.  This is a Republic, not a Democracy]
•  the problem that we have here is the Constitution of the United States of America which actually does require people to come together from different perspectives whether it's divided government or not.[ emphasis mine: comment:  It is rather telling that the problem is the Constitution]
• William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, notes that in the past 50 years, "government spending has increased an average of only 1.73 percent annually during periods of divided government. This number more than triples, to 5.26 percent, for periods of unified government."

The main quibble that I have with divided government is that no unified program can be implemented.  That is what we need right now.  This is very hard to do with a divided government.  Sometimes there are big majorities in the Congress with a President in the same party.  When that happens, they have a window of opportunity to do something with that power.  The Democrats decided to put all their eggs in the health care basket.  They didn't seem to care about getting the deficit down.  As a matter of fact, given the rhetoric employed by Krugman and others, the deficit is nothing to worry about - even now.

Anyhow, here is the video with Cokie Roberts