In this case, it was a debate over Big Government. The show's opening sounded like a Tea Party rally:

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: This week, a special program on the defining issue of 2012. Has Uncle Sam become too big, too powerful? A bailout bonanza, a welfare state? A tax-and-spend Goliath crushing the entrepreneurial spirit when America can't afford to fall behind? That's the rallying cry of the Tea Party, the mantra of Republican candidates everywhere.

GOV. RICK PERRY, R-TEXAS: Washington doesn't need a new coat of paint. It needs a complete overall.

AMANPOUR: At the heart of Ronald Reagan's famous declaration.

RONALD REAGAN: The government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.

AMANPOUR: Today, ABC News and the Miller Center of the University of Virginia present The Great American Debate. Facing off here in Washington, the intellectual heavyweights of both parties. For the right, Congressman Paul Ryan and ABC's own George Will. And from the left, Congressman Barney Frank and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

About all you can say about this is that it's relatively balanced in terms of  ideology.

But all the rhetoric about a "welfare state" and a "tax-and-spend Goliath" are staples of right-wing talk radio. Has the government gone on a spending binge in the Obama years? Not really, as Paul Krugman has explained a few times. Government spending as a share of GDP has gone up, but there are reasonable explanations--a massive recession, the cost of unemployment insurance--that have nothing to do with enterpreneur-crushing Big Government.

Reich tried to point out the flaws in the framing of this discussion at least once: "The idea of big government as a framing device in terms of a debate such as this inevitably sets it up kind of in favor of the side that doesn't want big government."

To suggest this is the "defining issue" of 2012 is rather remarkable. Most people think there's a jobs crisis, and understand that government spending might be the most efficient way to fix the problem. But I don't expect ABC to convene a "Great Debate" that is premised on a question like, "Why isn't the government spending enough money to create jobs?"

Until now, that is.

This week (Marketplace, 10/12/11), Frum came to the conclusion that while he's still conservative, he doesn't do a good job representing the right-wing position in that kind of  discussion anymore:

Well, we've been doing a point/counterpoint here between me and Bob Reich for a couple of years. And it's been a lot of fun. I've certainly learned a lot from it. But I think that there's a kind of expectation that when you do it, that you represent the broad point of view of your half of the political spectrum. And although I consider myself a conservative and a Republican, and I think that the right-hand side of the spectrum has the better answers for the long-term growth of economy--low taxes, restrained government, less regulation--it's pretty clear that facing the immediate crisis--very intense crisis--I'm just not representing the view of most people who call themselves Republicans and conservatives these days.

Good for Frum.

Now if only some of the people who are booked on corporate TV to represent "the left" would do the same.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was on hand to cheer on Christie's message (2/16/11). Christie pokes fun at his weight, which apparently makes his truth-telling even more appealing:

But his physique also works to his advantage by reinforcing Christie's appeal as something other than the blow-dried politician who says whatever the voters want to hear. Christie isn't pretty, and he tells ugly truths.

And what was this ugly truth? The need to cut Social Security benefits. As Milbank put it, Christie is brave enough to "to scold both parties in Washington for their failure to talk about what must be done to solve the debt crisis. " He writes:

Christie, however, is talking about it. "You're going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security," he said. "Whoa-ho! I just said it, and I'm still standing here. I did not vaporize into the carpeting, and I said it."

Now for this to be any kind of truth--ugly or not--it has to be, well, true. As Matthew Yglesias pointed out:

Closing the projected actuarial gap in Social Security requires some combination of more immigration, higher taxes and lower benefits. Relative to higher taxes, lower benefits tend to be preferred by richer people. And of all the different ways to reduce benefits, raising the retirement age is the one that does the most to punish the poor and demands the least sacrifice from the rich.

Robert Reich, who was once a Social Security trustee, wrote a column laying out a much easier fix--raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax, which in 1983 was designed to hit 90 percent of income. It no longer does that, because rich people have gotten substantially richer. Reich writes:

If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security's long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.

So there's no reason even to consider reducing Social Security benefits or raising the age of eligibility. The logical response to the increasing concentration of income at the top is simply to raise the ceiling.

If Christie's "ugly truth" isn't true, why does Milbank think it is? It might be because he has a record of Social Security scaremongering, writing a column in 2007 warning that Social Security was going to be "insolvent" due to the retirement of the Baby Boomers.  His response to FAIR's criticism was that he was writing about the combined effects of Social Security and Medicare--which is problematic on an entirely different level.

Chris Christie wasn't speaking the truth. But he was sending the same kind of message that people like Milbank want to hear: that workers should get benefit cuts in order to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy. It's ugly, but it's not the truth.

Mr. Reich sees a parallel with his former boss, Mr. Clinton, and draws no comfort from the comparison. Confronted with a muscular Republican majority in the House in 1994, Mr. Clinton mastered triangulation, which is to say he sailed into a sea neither Republican nor Democratic. It was a strategic masterstroke, but he threw overboard some liberal founding stones.

It's hard to know what is meant by a term like "strategic masterstroke." Obviously Bill Clinton was re-elected; whether voters were responding to Clinton's supposed drift to the right is much more debatable. (The economy improved from 1994 to 1996, which is likely to have been more important.) In any event, Clinton-style centrism did the Democratic Party no favors. As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen wrote (L.A. Times, 4/9/00):

While Clintonism may be good for Bill and Hillary and Al--all of whom seem willing to say or do anything to win the next election--it's worth asking whether Clintonism is good for the Democratic Party.

Let's do the numbers. When Clinton entered the White House, his party dominated the U.S. Senate, 57-43; the U.S. House, 258-176; the country's governorships, 30-18, and a large majority of state legislatures. Today, Republicans control the Senate, 55-45; the House, 222-211; governorships, 30-18, and almost half of state legislatures.

The Democrats under Clintonism resemble a house of cards, with the Clintons and Gore inhabiting the White House atop a party structure crumbling because of an ever-shifting foundation.