The buzzword has reached its entertainment destination, a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing Charlie Sheen’s obsession, but in American politics, no end is in sight.
The Wisconsin standoff goes on along with the budget game of chicken to avoid a Washington shutdown, prompting E.J. Dionne to recall Nixon’s “‘madman theory’…a negotiating approach that induces the other side to believe you are capable of dangerously irrational actions and leads it to back down to avoid the wreckage your rage might let loose.”
As John Boehner plays sane while pointing to his freshmen’s irrationality and Scott Baker digs into his bunker, it’s time for another look at the “winning” metaphor for human relations.
Vince Lombardi said it was “the only thing,” but that was football and, as a recent documentary showed, his monomaniacal devotion made him a sports legend but eventually destroyed his life in mid-age.
Between Sheen and the TV network that exploited his shaky character for ratings, it’s hard to care about who wins, but when politics, the so-called art of compromise, becomes a zero-sum game, we are all in trouble.
The past two years have been marked by Pyrrhic victories that have now gone bipartisan…