Apropos of nothing more specific than the United States Congress, this sentence by Matthew Yglesias is perhaps the most on-point, astute commentaries on the proceedings of the 111th Congress I have seen in 2009:

And as I’ve had occasion to note in the past, the administration has arguably been too eager to ask what substantive policy concessions Olympia Snowe wants and unduly reluctant to ask what our country can do for the lobster industry.

As they say, read the whole thing: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/11/obama-administration-considering-giving-in-to-deficit-mania.php