'Come Together'? Try 'Get It Together'

Yesterday Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced his DC-area stores would write "Come together" on coffee cups, to pressure lawmakers to come to a fiscal cliff agreement. Well, Jonathan Cohn shares his frustration—but he's really frustrated with people like Schultz who think Washington's dysfunction is the fault of both parties, he writes in the New Republic. "Washington doesn’t need two parties that can 'come together,'" he writes. "It needs one party to 'get it together.' Maybe Schultz should put that on a coffee cup."

Hard-core conservatives may be bucking John Boehner's attempts at compromise, but Cohn thinks Boehner could pass any budget bill easily if he were willing to call up Nancy Pelosi and get Democrats on board. Boehner, however, won't do that because he's too worried about upsetting his party's extremists and losing his job as House speaker. "All politicians act out of self-interest," writes Cohn. "But sometimes leadership means pushing your supporters to do something they might not like, because you believe it’s in the country’s best interests. And sometimes leadership means putting your own political fortunes in jeopardy, because doing so is the only way to take action." Click for Cohn's full column. (More fiscal cliff stories.)