Daily Reading: Friday, June 8th, 2012

If you read anything today, read this:

Ezra Klein provides a concise, near-perfect account of some of the basic structural issues affecting the American political system right now (if there's an implied imperative it is, in classic Ezra style, END THE FILIBUSTER).

No excuse to not read these:

1. David Brooks discusses morality in a world that treats "goodness" like an accounting exercise:

But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.

The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.

2. Doubling down on the NYT columnists today. I touched on Paul Krugman's column earlier, but you should read it even if you don't read me.

3. Yglesias quickly notes America's military export strategy. The interesting angle here: American consumers don't have a good sense of how much America does still export because we don't tend to manufacture consumer products.

4. Coates is eloquent on race in America, as always:

Another trap is an inverted American exceptionalism, the notion that bigotry is somehow unique to the American social and economic structure. I'm thinking of threatening to run to Canada if Bush won the election. Or, specifically for me, reading about Paul Robeson's (who is heroic to me) embrace of Stalin.  Even as I write that I don't want to be to harsh. I can't really say what pre-Civil Rights America would have driven me too. But nevertheless I think it's important for black people to note that there is no "other country," that the trans-Atlantic slave trade, was far reaching, and white supremacy followed with it.

Read if you've got the time:

1. Nate Silver introduces his model for the 2012 Presidential Election. It integrates some data on economic fundamentals (improving on his 2008 effort) and should be the bible for poll junkies this election season.

2. Andrew Sullivan continues to hit Romney, hard:

Romney will run against a fictional Obama, and Fox will provide the cover, and unless Obama is able to change the frame of this debate, the relentless propaganda will be potent. Yes, the level of deception is so great it's breath-taking. But Romney, I'm increasingly inclined to believe, is a businessman all the way down... A businessman can compartmentalize core moral and political questions into marketing. The goal is 50.1 percent saturation...There is something increasingly chilling about this shape-shifter, isn't there? He views himself as a product to be marketed to different audiences at different times. And the actual content of that product is completely malleable. It can change as swiftly as Mormon doctrine, when market share is at stake. To predict Romney, in other words, you simply have to merely examine the market he's selling to.As I noted once before, he doesn't just believe that corporations are people; he is a walking corporation masquerading as a person.