Let the pendulum swing

Via TPM, Ed Kilgore gives us five reasons we're better off without the filibuster . And here's a rather nice point to consider:

If America's political genius is, as professional "centrists" sometimes insist, to foster the competition of conservative and liberal ideas and constituency groups operating dialectically like swings of a pendulum, the pendulum must be allowed to swing. Parties must be able to govern--succeeding, failing, adjusting, rethinking--before they can meaningfully be countered or restrained. A motionless pendulum halted by legislative obstruction means a dead mechanism: a feckless government, a directionless bureaucracy, and a democracy where voters express contempt for both parties and for government itself. Sound familiar?