This week in Comment, Margaret Talbot looks at how gun-control measures are losing support in Congress and recommends that such legislation should be treated with urgency, despite the perceived political consequences: http://nyr.kr/Y3jEYI

Illustration by Tom Bachtell

(Source: newyorker.com)

The results of the last Italian election are baffling, if not incomprehensible, to most foreign observers: as one American friend put it, a majority of Italians voted either for a comedian (Beppe Grillo) or a clown (Silvio Berlusconi). A center-left coalition won a narrow plurality in the lower house of parliament with about 29.6 per cent of the vote, barely edging Berlusconi’s center-right coalition, with Grillo’s Five Star Movement, a loose collection of citizens organizing over the Internet, gaining an astonishing 25.6 per cent, more than any single party. In all likelihood, the three-sided split spells an ungovernable chaos. It would be a mistake, though, to see Italy as a crazy farce that is entirely different from America. Our two-party system has limited the success of more radical parties, but the Italian experience illuminates phenomena that are at work in the United States, too. Are we really sure that Congress is a saner institution than the Italian parliament?

Alexander Stille considers Italy’s rudderless state: http://nyr.kr/YM4SEB

Photograph by Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg/Getty

(Source: newyorker.com)

A fundamental fact of modern political life is that the only way to advance a coherent agenda in Washington is through partisan dominance…

The boring fact of our system is that congressional math is the best predictor of a President’s success. This idea is not nearly as sexy as the notion that great Presidents are great because they twist arms in backrooms and inspire the American people to rise up and force Congress to bend to their will. But even the Presidents who are remembered for their relentless congressional lobbying and socializing were more often than not successful for more mundane reasons—like arithmetic.

In today’s Daily Comment, Ryan Lizza writes about the limits of President Obama’s power in the wake of the failed sequester deal: http://nyr.kr/XT5vgj

Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP.

Not only did he put pressure on G.O.P. leaders to compromise in the dispute over the sequester; he also called on European countries to ease up on their austerity policies, saying that they could adopt a “more judicious balance” of short-term and long-term fiscal consolidation. 

John Cassidy on Ben Bernanke’s lecture to Congress that spotlighted the harsh truths about austerity economics: http://nyr.kr/X944xQ 

“What we have now is a government where the notion of solving the problem seems to be secondary to a lot of people in Congress,” George Packer says on this week’s Political Scene podcast. “That’s our political life these days: going from one near-death experience to the next.”

The next such brush with fiscal mortality on the schedule is, of course, the sequester. On March 1st, a series of severe cuts to the federal budget will go into effect if Congress can’t pass a suitable deficit-reduction plan. Packer joins James Surowiecki and host Dorothy Wickenden on the podcast to discuss the long line of short-sighted policy decisions that have emerged from Congress over the past few years, the lack of action on significant issues like inequality and growth, and what has been happening to Americans as a result. Listen to the podcast, and click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/W6L846

(Source: newyorker.com / The New Yorker)

John Cassidy on Congressional Republicans, “about to endorse another damaging economic idea that should be consigned to the history books: a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/WFsZZF

Alex Koppelman on the limits of what Biden’s task force will be able to accomplish: http://nyr.kr/ZPrASm

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty.

Governing is never a zero-sum game. That’s especially true when the political landscape is as divided as today’s is—on a single issue, both sides win and both sides lose; otherwise, nothing would ever get done. On this week’s Political Scene podcast, John Cassidy and Ryan Lizza talk with host Dorothy Wickenden about the way that dynamic played out during the latest battle in Washington—the fiscal cliff—as well as the outcome of that fight, and the economic challenges that face the newly-installed Congress.  Listen now: http://nyr.kr/1321ivU

(Source: newyorker.com / The New Yorker)

John Cassidy on why there will be no great cause for celebration even if a fiscal cliff bill passes both chambers of Congress in the next day or two:

It’s a shoddy compromise that does credit to nobody involved, and it raises questions, once again, about President Obama’s willingness and ability to face down the Republican extremists.

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/TCQlMr

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty.