Mitch McConnell is an Unusually Functional GOP Leader

It's not saying much but at least he actually engages in leadership. He has not time for  games of chicken over the debt ceiling and plans no hearings with Planned Parenthood.

Time will tell if Paul Ryan can be as effective as McConnell or anywhere close. His rhetoric this morning on Face the Nation about not being a dictator and working along side his fellow Republicans is not a great sign.

He should work not just with his fellow Republicans but Democrats too. Leadership means finding agreement even with people who there is considerable disagreement with. That's leadership rather than anarchy.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/paul-ryan-declares-hes-not-dictator.html
By the way, it's why Hillary Clinton makes such a great leader. Just check out her book Hard Choices and this will be clear. She knows how to find common ground even with people who lead countries where we and they have huge seemingly unbridgeable differences.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Choices-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton/dp/1476751471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446390014&sr=8-1&keywords=hillary+clinton+hard+choices

She was after all the nation's chief diplomat for four years. Of course, the GOP has contempt for the State Department which is why their questions to her in that Benghazi hearing were so facile.

Recently, McConnell's Senate passed a major criminal reform bill.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/senate-reaches-compromise-on-criminal-justice-reform-214278

Mother Jones had a piece that analyzed the bill:

"The New Bipartisan Criminal-Justice Reform Bill Doesn't Live Up to Its Own Hype."

It's a start—but we'll still have the world's largest prison population."

"Today, nine Senate Republicans and Democrats proposed a bill that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) hailed as "the biggest criminal justice reform in our generation." This is undoubtedly true, at least at the federal level. The proposal, which was more than three years in the making and touches on everything from drug sentencing to solitary confinement for kids, is the most concrete step yet to confront what politicians on both sides of the aisle are now calling our "mass incarceration" problem."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/senate-criminal-justice-reform-bill-prisons

Now this is a pet peeve of mine. We just have the man bites dog moment of a house of Congress doing something constructive and right away the whole focus is on What it doesn't do, what it doesn't do, what it doesn't do.

I agree that mass incarceration is a very important problem that needs a solution. But can we just admit that Rome wasn't built in a day?

On an issue which has not seen any positive reform in years in a Congress that has been dysfunctional for years, can't we at least give some credit for an important step?

Change will often be incremental. Does the writer, Shane Bauer, believe that there were the votes to pass something that would have ended mass incarceration overnight but that they refused to bring it to a vote?

If you think that's what McConnell did, then you have a gripe. Otherwise not so much.

I understand that the temperament of activists always seems to be to accentuate the negative. They worry that without constant pressure nothing will be done.

Barney Frank in his recent new book-that is just a great read; I haven't read it yet, though I've seen enough excerpts-plus knowing him-to know this is a great book-criticized this tendency of activists.

http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Politics-Society-Same-Sex-Marriage/dp/0374280304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446390841&sr=8-1&keywords=barney+frank

Activists who focus on single issues, etc., tend to feel that only negative reinforcement works. They worry that if they don't remain in a constantly critical posture nothing will get done that they think needs doing.

I don't know. I mean any decent elementary school teacher knows you can't teach only through negative reinforcement.

I guess, adult politicians are supposed to be different? I don't know, I think that humans are pretty universal in needing praise and positive reinforcement.

To me, if I'm a criminal reform activist and we had the first movement at the federal level on this in a generation, I think I'd celebrate it a little. Take a victory lap.

First of all, it's a product of your own activism. But also give some credit to the politicians who passed it.

Activists tend to be contemptuous of politicians being focused on polls and being re-elected. But that's what they should do. Remember that time when Dick Cheney was asked about his poll numbers and said So What?

That was absolutely chilling. It gives you an idea of what a real dictator would actually sound like.

An activist may be focused on just one or a few issues whereas a politician has to be focused on many.

Frank argued in his book that refusing to give any credit can backfire as some politicians will conclude what's the point of working with these activists who are always throwing tomatoes?

If I were a criminal reform activist what I might have done would be to call those who got it passed and thank them. I'd then say I'd like to be there when the bill is signed and allow them to bask in the praise and adulation for a day at least.

An observation of Garry Wills is that politicians are totally driving by ego and vanity.

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Conservative-Garry-Wills/dp/0385089775/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446391547&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=garry+wills+confessions+of+a+convservative

 Ok, then it makes sense to sometimes stroke their egos. 

P.S. This is just a general philosophical point I'm making here. I don't disagree at all that this is not the end of the need for reform, that it's just a start. Just that I do think that activists often are counterproductive in always emphasizing what they don't like or where something doesn't go far enough.