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In a comment over at KVNU’s For The People blog Craig concluded that if I was right in my position about health care it would mean that basically everyone had been missing the boat on this issue. My response to Craig was that I honestly believe that this current reform debate is missing the boat on what reforms we need.
Meanwhile, over at Fire Dog Lake (again) I find another insightful post from a staunch liberal, this time it’s from Jane Hamsher (yesterday it was Jon Walker) who is talking about what she calls the left/right populist wrap around.
There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, “bailout” Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country’s resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we’ve worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging. (emphasis added)
This is another example of the media missing the boat. They play everything as Left vs Right. They promote the notion that anything which angers both the radical right and the radical left must be pretty good policy – that’s their definition of centrist. In contrast, Ms. Hamsher pits the left/right populist wrap around against the beltway insiders – or as some of my commenters have called them, the corporatists.
Being able to unite the left wing and the right wing in opposition to a policy does not make that a good policy. After all, the German Fascists were able to unite the American Capitalists and the Soviet Communists in opposition against them, but you won’t here anyone (except neo-nazis) arguing that the German Fascists were good because of that.
We’ve had a perfect example of that here recently. I consider myself to be more conservative than the “conservatives” in Congress. Charles considers himself to be more liberal than the “liberals” in Congress. We disagree on many issues, but we’d both like to see a government that represented the people of the United States. I don’t see how it can be argued that Congress is getting it right when I want to see my Republican senator defeated and have him replaced with a real Conservative and Charles want to see his Democratic senator defeated and have her replaced with a real Liberal. (Excuse me for putting words into your mouth Charles.)
There is a disconnect between the roots of representative government and the tree of elected officers. Anyone who thinks that is a positive sign or healthy in any way is definitely missing the boat.
P.S. Having two hits in two days means I will now be following Fire Dog Lake rather than waiting for others to point out their latest articles.
4 replies on “Missing the Boat”
I agree (and you have stated my position accurately) that there is an agreement by left and right that the current state of government and the government’s current course of action are detrimental to the republic. One might characterize this as populism, but I’m not certain that label is accurate either.
If we could get representative government and get corporate money and influence out of politics, I think left and right would at that point, stop agreeing so much. What we might be able to do however is find a basis for discussion and compromise instead of endless political posturing and spouting of slogans at one another. Besides the obvious difficulty in overcoming an entrenched, wealthy and powerful set of insider interests, we would also face the opposition of those within our own “grassroots” groups who are mired in the left-right partisanship that is fostered by the media and the beltway insiders.
I absolutely agree with you that this is a huge and multi-faceted problem to overcome in our politics. I have no doubt that if we had a truly representative government there would be less agreement between the left and the right, but agreement is not the goal. Discussion and compromise in place of political posturing and sound-bite sloganeering would be a great upgrade, in fact that is the goal rather than simply agreement. I don’t know the source of the saying but I agree with the sentiment:
“After all, the German Fascists were able to unite the American Capitalists and the Soviet Communists in opposition against them, but you won’t here anyone (except neo-nazis) arguing that the German Fascists were good because of that.”
That’s not entirely correct. Titans of industry at the time where much more sympathetic to the Germans then most people are aware of. In the late 1930’s it was thought that international business opportunity’s with the Nazi Germany where going to bring about great prosperity for America and Germany. The public at large was very isolationist and didn’t want to get involved with Europe’s spat again this time around, really what started the souring of German/American relations at the time was the lend lease act and the general public’s sympathy towards Briton.
Many corporations tried to create entity’s that would survive in Germany that profits could be collected from after the European conflict was finished, For example Fanta Orange.
What I said was absolutely correct. Regardless of what some “titans of industry” thought or did the fact remains that the Americans (capitalists) and the Soviets (communists) were allies in fighting to stop the Germans (Fascists).