Slate’s Jacob Weisberg sticks it to what Michael Kinsley once called the “big babies” in “Down With the People–Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.”

Opinion polls over the last year reflect ..a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, climate change, and a whole host of other major problems. …We want Washington and the states to fix all of our problems now. At the same time, we want government to shrink, spend less, and reduce our taxes. …Our collective illogic is mostly negligent rather than militant. The more compelling explanation is that the American public lives in Candyland, where government can tackle the big problems and get out of the way at the same time….Middle-class Americans really don’t want to hear about sacrifices or trade-offs—except as flattering descriptions about how ready we, as a people, are, or used to be, to accept them. We like the idea of hard choices in theory. When was the last time we made one in reality?…Increasingly, the crucial distinction is between the minority of serious politicians in either party who are prepared to speak directly about our choices, on the one hand, and the majority who indulge the public’s delusions, on the other.