Something Rather Than Nothing

Ezra Klein on the inevitable end of the "do-something Congress":

What's been uncommon about the past two years is that the Democrats in Congress managed to put aside enough of their disagreements to get big, important things done, things they really believed would make this country better, things they'd been fighting and working for and trying to do for decades.

That this has been the most "do-something" Congress we've seen in 40 years hasn't made much of an impression on the public. Multiple polls have found that only a minority of voters know that the 111th Congress got more done than most congresses. That's true even among Democrats. Nor has their productivity made the 111th Congress popular. But if they failed as politicians, they succeeded as legislators. And legislating is, at least in theory, what they came to Washington to do.