Washington Ennui, ‘Manningcast’ Envy, and a Wall Street Fire Sale

Good afternoon, and thanks as always for reading The Daily Courant, your post meridiem survey of the latest reportage from Puck’s elite team of journalists.

Today, we direct your attention to Julia Ioffe‘s insidery counterpoint to the hair-on-fire news coverage surrounding the debt ceiling, infrastructure spending, and the rest of Joe Biden‘s seemingly embattled political agenda. But, as Ioffe points out, the most noteworthy aspect of Washington’s current gridlock is that it is totally, painfully normal.

Plus, below the fold, Matt Belloni takes a closer look at the ‘Manning-cast,’ Peyton and Eli Manning‘s back-and-forth banter show that might just represent the future of sports television—or at least one version for ESPN.

Democrats, Republicans, and the Media Squabble in a Post-Trump Malaise

As one congressman said, “The blow-by-blow is intensely interesting to journalists and to members [of Congress], but our constituents couldn’t care less.” And yet, there is something so delightfully refreshing about it all. Could it last?

It’s hard to write about something that hasn’t happened yet, or something that is in the process of happening—or in the process of not happening—and yet here we all are: me, writing about it; you, reading about it. It’s a situation in which dozens (hundreds?) of journalists in Washington now find themselves, trying to cover a legislative process that would be complicated just on its face—the Build Back Better spending package currently clocks in at just under 2,500 pages—and that’s before you factor in the political posturing of the White House, plus 535 congresspeople and senators (and thousands of all of their on-background staffers). 

How do we make sense of it, even if it seems like there is both nothing to make sense of yet (the bills are still being negotiated), or if there’s too much chaos, minutiae, and maneuvering to see things clearly? 

Here are a few thoughts as we continue into the week.

First, this is normal. What you’ve been watching for the past two weeks is Washington’s full return to its own version of normalcy. After four years of Donald Trump, and eighteen months of a pandemic that forced the Hill to pass giant, bipartisan rescue packages, Washington is back to what it has looked like since at least the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency: two political parties with radically different aims and visions of good governance, haggling over legislation till the last possible minute. “Normal” is not necessarily a compliment. Normal for Washington for a long time now has been about the impossibility of passing big, ambitious legislation on a bipartisan basis. The parties are now so far apart in how they view the role of government, and their own priorities, that finding a middle ground is pretty much non-existent. Democrats want to use the power of the state to fix society’s ills and believe it can be done, while Republicans want to limit the government’s reach into citizens’ lives. (Alas, few Republicans with an ostensible interest in policy making survived the Trump era.) “Democrats are the party of government,” says NPR’s Mara Liasson. “There are lots of things they want to do with government, like fix the climate, improve health care and education. Republicans, in general, have a much more modest legislative agenda. When they’re in control, they just want to confirm judges and cut taxes, for the most part.”

Whether you call this the messy business of legislating or gridlock, whether you think this is a good state of affairs or not, it is what we have come to expect from the Hill during the obstreperous reign of Mitch McConnell. The Trump presidency temporarily distracted us, the pandemic emergency forced some teamwork, but now we’re back to baseline, however much we the rest of the country may hate it.

Second, for all the mayhem on the Hill, everyone is acting rationally, considering their priorities and the incentives arrayed before them…

FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT