David McElroy

The congressional “super committee” is a super failure. The only question I have is why anyone ever thought it had a chance of success.

This super committee was set up as a result of the congressional budget deal in August. Formally, it’s called the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, but everybody just calls it the super committee. Its job was to do what Congress was supposed to have done during the fight a few months ago — figure out how to reduce the federal budget deficit that’s threatening to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

Democrats on the committee want tax increases and few spending cuts. Republicans want no tax increases and slightly more serious spending cuts. The two sides have positions that are locked in concrete. They aren’t budging. Monday, the members announced that they’re giving up, because no deal is possible.

If you read various stories about why the negotiations failed, you almost have to come to the conclusion that the two sides might as well be on different planets insofar as how they view the world. Democrats view high-income taxpayers as cows to be milked. Republicans want to keep milking those cows, but just not as hard. The narrative that’s probably going to prevail in the media is the one that says Republican insistence on extending the Bush-era tax cuts is to blame for the failure. I think the truth is simpler and less exciting to TV news.

This country isn’t united in what it wants. It’s not even close. Maybe it never has been. But the fissures are getting deeper. The unity that exists in history books and government classes and romantic imaginations is gone. We have less and less in common. There’s nothing united about today’s United States.

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On the surface, this is a story about food and obesity. Underneath, though, it’s a much deeper story — about science, economics, prejudice and how humans arrive at their version of truth. It’s complicated and messy, but the lessons are applicable across the board — including in politics.

Over the last 50 years, it’s become medical wisdom that eating fat is a very bad thing. It causes obesity. It clogs arteries. It causes all sorts of problems. But what if there’s no proof of that? What if every study ever attempted to prove it had done the opposite or been inconclusive? Science writer Gary Taubes says that’s the case.

Taubes researched the history of the recommendations against fat and the various efforts to prove that approach is the right one. He also looked at the competing theory about obesity, heart disease and other health problems — that they’re caused by sugar. His evidence will leave you wondering why you ever worried so much about fat.

His book is called “Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health,” but you don’t have to read the book to be fascinated by its insights, both about nutrition and about how science determines what’s true and what’s not. (If you’re honest, it might make you wonder how honest you can really be with yourself.) On this week’s episode of EconTalk, economist Russ Roberts interviews Taubes. Click “play” to listen.

[haiku url=”http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2011/Taubesfat.mp3″ title=”EconTalk: Taubes on Fat, Sugar and Scientific Discovery” graphical=”true”]

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When Bill Clinton was president, he was evil incarnate to Republicans. When George W. Bush was president, he was evil incarnate to Democrats. Now that Barack Obama is president, he has become evil incarnate to Republicans. Are you seeing a pattern here?

We have an irrational natural tendency to personalize our politics. The people who disagree with us aren’t just wrong. They’re evil. And the problem with them isn’t just the ideas they represent. It’s the people themselves. Yes, we tend to make everything about the people, so we ignore the ideas that gave us those people.

The same system that produced Clinton as president also produced Bush and Obama as president. Ultimately, the men who’ve been elected president are pawns of one basic idea — the idea that if we get “the right man for the job” and give him power over us, everything will be just fine. That’s delusional. The problem isn’t the individuals. The problem is a system that’s based on a false premise.

Getting rid of Obama as president isn’t going to fix the things that conservatives are so worried about. Hating him might help them release some anger in the meantime, but it’s useless in solving the problem. The same was true of all of the irrational insults that were hurled by the progressive left at Bush when he was bumbling through his two terms. I oppose what each man stands for, but I know the underlying system is to blame. It’s only by changing the system that we can ever produce different results.

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