I was reading Keats last night -- well, doing my yeoman's best; abnormally huge swaths of early 19th-century British poetry are so overgrown with naturalistic sentimentality as to gag even an Oprah audience -- when I encountered this gem of a line: the "still unravished bride of quietness."
One of my immovable impediments with poetry, even the truly transporting stuff, is that I, an American barbarian, tend to filter its soaring metaphors through a grubby lens of political interpretation. And sure enough, when I confronted Keats' "unravished bride of quietness," I thought of Congress this reposing, hushed holiday week.
By next week, she'll be ravished. Or, to clarify by banishing the passive, she may be ravishing us.
To listen to cable news chatter or read progressive Web sites, however, there's no question as to which will be which: the debauchery will be an unsightly one-way street, with exalted tea partying lawmakers spelling instant doom for New Deal remnants and Great Society vestiges and Obama's accomplished agenda -- doom, indeed, for America itself.
How pleasant it was, then, to read Eugene Robinson's calming reminder this morning, "Danger ahead for the GOP," in which he realistically notes that "It's going to be a challenge for Republicans just to maintain party unity, much less to enact the kind of conservative agenda they promised to their enthusiastic, impatient voters."
As a frequent analyst on the cable shows Robinson does his yeoman's best to feed the audience's fever, but I always detect a pensive unease with the task and he generally restrains both himself and the host's unbridled panic. Nonetheless he's much better, more soothing, more thoughtful, in print -- precisely as he is today: "In the Senate, there could be as many as 11 Republicans who might defect and vote with the Democrats, depending on the issue"; and though "The new House will be decidedly more conservative than the old House," Robinson's (accurate, I think) "reading of the electorate is that voters want Congress to tackle big problems rather than waste the next two years mired in gridlock."
A minor difference of opinion. That, I think as well, is the beauty of the new House. I doubt they'll be able to help themselves; they'll thunder and roar and launch witless investigations and shove some of the silliest legislation you could ever imagine straight through and on to the Senate, where it'll crash and burn, regardless of its moderate-Republican population. The resultant gridlock will infuriate voters, who will turn on the House's uncompromising culprits.
Robinson concludes that "some Republicans already know, and others will soon learn" that "the idea of small, limited government may be appealing, but this is a big, complicated country."
The unmistakable implication is that those reeducated House Republicans will switch from high- to low-heat madness, and come to Obama and Democrats and reason together. Here, my doubts are even deeper, because any meditation of reasonable, responsible governance will be cancelled by their fear of being primaried by an even fresher brood of rabid tea partiers.
Nevertheless, Robinson has it about right: there's "Danger ahead for the GOP" -- far more perils for them than for President Obama, Congressional Dems, or the country at large.