From Michael Kinsley: "People who want divided government are afraid of politics." To Kinsley, it seems, politics is fundamentally about the exercise of power, a point of view which demonstrates, once again, the difference between the Progressive/ liberal mind and that of the founders. They understood that politics is fundamentally an argument about justice. We have a system of checks and balances precisely because we believe in having that argument over, and over, and over again. In that sense, divided government is an embrace of politics, not a rejection of it. The kicker is that in America today the argument is, to a great degree, between these two understandings of politics.
Funny that just a few short years ago a lot of conservatives were bad-mouthing McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the "Gang of Fourteen" for stopping efforts by the GOP majority to prevent the Dems from filibustering the president's judicial nominees. I guess checks and balances look a lot better to whichever party is in the minority.