Comments on: Come Together…Over the Issues http://blog.psaonline.org/2008/02/08/come-together%e2%80%a6over-the-issues/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:45:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Krishna Kumar http://blog.psaonline.org/2008/02/08/come-together%e2%80%a6over-the-issues/comment-page-1/#comment-649000 Krishna Kumar Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:24:24 +0000 http://blog.psaonline.org/2008/02/08/come-together%e2%80%a6over-the-issues/#comment-649000 I've always framed issues in Washington as "major league" and "minor league". Major league issues are what you read about in the A section of the Washington Post -- and are generally partisan. Minor league issues are the annoying dreck of issues where you don't form partisan alliances -- you're instead working with ten separate interest groups that are each trying to get their version passed. The Washington Post never covers them. Minor league issues are the bread and butter of policy wars -- you'll sometime find an alliance with a member of another party against a member of your own party. (cough, ed markey) A lot of national security/foreign policy issues are now major, major league -- very partisan issues -- but there is still a lot of them that are minor league. Take Kosovo, or cyberwar, or US relations with South Korea. Some stuff are beyond politics as well -- energy security, or maybe the environment/global warming/AIDS. I used to say that your job in Washington was to make sure a minor-league issue never became a major-league issue, and I wonder how true that is of PSA's basket of national security issues. Once you get up the majors, resolving the problem isn't really that important as you can use that issue as a stick to bash your partisan opponents. And yes, this does mean I finally figured out how to add you to my RSS feeds. I’ve always framed issues in Washington as “major league” and “minor league”. Major league issues are what you read about in the A section of the Washington Post — and are generally partisan. Minor league issues are the annoying dreck of issues where you don’t form partisan alliances — you’re instead working with ten separate interest groups that are each trying to get their version passed. The Washington Post never covers them. Minor league issues are the bread and butter of policy wars — you’ll sometime find an alliance with a member of another party against a member of your own party. (cough, ed markey)

A lot of national security/foreign policy issues are now major, major league — very partisan issues — but there is still a lot of them that are minor league. Take Kosovo, or cyberwar, or US relations with South Korea.

Some stuff are beyond politics as well — energy security, or maybe the environment/global warming/AIDS.

I used to say that your job in Washington was to make sure a minor-league issue never became a major-league issue, and I wonder how true that is of PSA’s basket of national security issues. Once you get up the majors, resolving the problem isn’t really that important as you can use that issue as a stick to bash your partisan opponents.

And yes, this does mean I finally figured out how to add you to my RSS feeds.

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