I’m going to read the Opinion Duel this afternoon. But there’s one thing Chait’s TNR piece (you can get the link through Opinion Duel) that I thought was inadvertantly hilarious was this:

Unlike Nixon, FDR enjoyed unified control of Congress, yet his fellow Democrats were fractious enough to stop him from bullying the Supreme Court. Had those presidents, like Bush, enjoyed the benefits of a subservient Congress and a staff that never spoke out against their excesses, they might have done a lot of damage.

Now Chait’s as close we get to a New Deal liberal these days so I’m sure he’s being sincere — even bipartisan. But I love the cavalier implication that Nixon and FDR were prevented from doing a “lot of damage” because their “excesses” were criticized and therefore curtailed. I mean, some of us think that FDR and Nixon did do a lot of damage that we’re still dealing with today.