Aside from not actually bothering
to pay any attention to the world as is, as opposed to the world in his brain, this reflects the basic belief of many people in centrist punditry that if only you can nudge some basic constraints out of the way, a major one being "things voters want," that all the sensible people in Congress will get together and cook up some common sense policies, common sense policies that miraculously are the ones that Tom Friedman approves of.
In this Tom Friedman isn't so different than the "undecided voter" on a cable news focus group, except that guy thinks that means "good things."
Forcing the parties to work together means allowing the parties to ignore their respective supporters. It's the Dream Of The Grand Bargain. The worst things in Washington are the things the parties can manage to agree on.
