Why liberals hate democracy

President Obama’s former Office of Management and Budget director, and current Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup, Peter Orszag has a column up at The New Republic titled, “Too Much of a Good Thing, Why we need less democracy.” Orszag writes:

During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. … To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

Orszag goes on to make the case for government-by-expert-commission, decrying the rise of polarization, which he claims “is making it increasingly difficult for lawmakers to tackle the issues that are central to our country’s future.” Orszag then gets specific, asserting that “virtually all responsible economists agree” that we need more deficit spending now and plans for deficit reduction sometime in the unspecified future. Orszag then blames polarized politics for the failure of Congress to enact policy along these lines. “What we need, then, are ways around our politicians,” Orszag concludes.