CNN’s Eric Bradner, whose prose makes me suspect that he is some sort of cleverly designed cliché-bot, warns that the CRomnibus fight “offers a grim glimpse at the paralyzing levels of dissent” likely to plague the next Congress.

Grim, is it?

Never mind “the highest form of patriotism,” which is what all the best people insisted dissent was until five minutes ago, there is no way in which what Mr. Bradner calls “dissent” is distinguishable from “democracy.” Mr. Bradner’s assumption that there is a self-evidently sensible strain of “centrism” detectable by CNN reporters and identical to their own sensibilities, and that dissent from the CNN-endorsed weltanschauung constitutes noxious extremism, is one of the oldest forms of political trickery, one to which the Left in its institutional capacity (media, universities, etc.) brings a masterly touch: Set the table and offer a choice of policy entrees ranging from moderately Left to robustly Left. It’s sneaky.

Allowing government spending authorization to expire — it is too much to call these episodes “shutdowns” inasmuch as the government does not shut down — may not be popular, and it may not be politically prudent, but it is not illegitimate. Congress has the power of the purse for good constitutional reasons, and using that power to pursue the policies they think best is the reason we send elected representatives to Washington.

That’s all terribly messy and inconvenient if you think that you have everything already figured out, if you think that governance is a math problem that can be reasoned out in advance by clever kids from Georgetown. Fortunately, our system was designed by men who knew better, and who rather than regarding it as “grim” thought so highly of dissent that they used it as the organizing principle of our national government.