Democrats Are Out of Gas

The Democrats' passage of health care reform felt like a family reunion where you saw "the whole panoply of what you loved and found annoying about these people" to David Brooks. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi deserve posterity "for sheer resilience," he writes, but as the last plank of the welfare state slides into place, their party seems to be lacking the energy needed to take America into the future, Brooks writes in the New York Times.

The Democrats, at their best, embody the cause of "fairness and family security," Brooks writes, but they seem fundamentally incapable of making the tough cuts needed to deal with an exploding deficit and a rapidly aging population. "The task ahead is to save this country from stagnation and fiscal ruin," Brooks writes, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem up to the task. (More David Brooks stories.)