It never ceases to amaze me how often--and usually, how eloquently--the daily newspaper expresses ideas that have been explicated at a high level of abstraction by certified intellectuals. It happened again today.
Last week, students in the Washington Academic Internship Program read and discussed two classic works of political science. The first, James Madison's Tenth Federalist, argues that one of the chief virtues of our "pluralistic" political system inheres in the many points of access offered to interest groups bent on frustrating popular majorities ("the mischiefs of faction"). The second, Charles Lindblom's essay on "the science of muddling through," explains why it is simply impossible for policy makers to be strictly rational, and why they must therefore settle for a decision-making method involving "successive limited comparisons" that guarantees incrementalist results.
Today it was David Broder's turn to demonstrate the relationship between these two (that is, Madison's and Lindblom's) ideas and their pertinence to contemporary public affairs. Click here to read Broder's column in today's Post.
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