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Back in October I wrote about the dangers of a crisis mentality and tried to show that the abuse of crisis was not a one-party trait. I see that Will Wilkinson did a better job of showing that this month in Let the next crisis go to waste:
The Aughts began in crisis when the second plane hit the second tower on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration, loath to let a serious crisis go to waste, managed to parlay the nation’s alarm and credulity into an ill-conceived invasion of an entirely unrelated country, wasting over a trillion dollars and many tens of thousands of lives, all while losing control of the fight in Afghanistan and failing utterly to bring down Osama bin Laden.
Bush’s botched attempts to capitalize on crisis—the ugly aftermath to which Obama is heir—might have made an alert leader wary. But instead, Obama set up shop in the Oval Office and proceeded immediately to use crisis as (Emanuel’s words again) “an opportunity to do things you’d think you could not do.”
Rather than acting as a prudent guardian of the public good in a time of economic turbulence and hardship, Obama and the Democratic Congress have hurried to check the boxes on their partisan wish list precisely when the nation most needed a restorative break from transformative ambition.
When Obama was campaigning he promised change – the only change we got was that the president was officially affiliated with a different party than before. His opponents during the campaign were vocal about the fact that they could not believe he would deliver the promised change. Since his inauguration some of those who supported him have found that they no longer believe in the change he promised. We were promised an end to “politics as usual.” Instead some left wishing for the politics of the 90’s – nasty as they were – rather than the politics of today. As Mr. Wilkinson put it:
This marriage of incompetence and craven opportunism is so much in the familiar spirit of the age that one must conclude that the age itself remains unchanged.
The “crisis as opportunity” mentality can lead to only one thing – criminal behavior. It is the same mentality that leads to looters during the L.A. race riots of the past and the Hatian earthquake of the present.
I have concluded that regardless of whatever other rhetoric a candidate may offer in the future the biggest change I want to see will be a candidate who promises to treat a crisis as a crisis and not as an opportunity.
12 replies on “Change I Could Believe In”
I agree that the only change we got was in the letter after the President’s name. I want to create a T-Shirt: “I voted for hope and change and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!”
However, I fail to find much evidence of the partisan wish list on the part of the Democrats. They certainly talked about a lot of things they wanted to do, but aside from a woefully inadequate stimulus bill watered down in a vain attempt at bipartisanship, they have accomplished nothing. Even the GM takeover failed to achieve anything for any of the stakeholders. In fact, I would propose that rather than take advantage of the crisis he was handed, President Obama has frittered away his opportunities and his political capital and has nothing to show for it.
I agree that they have not accomplished much, but you have to look at what they attempted – it was nothing but a partisan wish list (plus doubling down on Afghanistan which is not exactly a Democratic wish). They tried Cap and Trade but never got it finished. They tried universal health care even after the people turned against their watered down, ineffective but costly, waste of effort. You are right that Obama frittered away his opportunities and his political capital and has practically nothing to show for it.
P.S. I like the T-Shirt idea. you should make it a bipartisan venture by offering another version for people like me: “I didn’t vote for the illusion of hope and change I still got this lousy T-shirt!”
Considering that the republicans up and excluded themselves from the national debate on these issues its no wonder that they didn’t get done, The democrats had to have a 100% agreement of their caucus in both houses along with both independent senators to pass anything.
Republicans even voting against things they supported just to take a swipe at Obama. They voted against troop funding, they voted against a bipartisan fiscal responsibility committee charged with cutting the deficit.
Obama has certainly screwed up a few things, but any party will have problems getting 100% support on every issue within their own party. Certainly Obama’s biggest problem is the amount of time he spent trying to work with republicans rather then working with his own party.
The Democrats still have some time to make a few gains, they have 3 viable paths to pass health care still at least one of which does not involve the senate, Cap and Trade is likely dead but it is still being worked on(this is actually party the baby of a republican funny enough so theirs still a chance), card check is dead for now(democrats never really pushed it much), their will be a jobs bill and because this will contain money for state governments their will likely be a few republicans on board.
I wouldn’t say all is lost for the Democrat causes, The MA election was a wake up call for the Democrats. Polling the day after showed some rather surprising results, 82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown support the public option for example.
I have to remind Ronald that the Democrats have a larger majority in both houses than the Republicans have had in living memory. That never prevented Republican presidents, even unpopular ones with no claim of a mandate, from achieving their political goals. IMHO the Democrats were very happy to hide behind the cloture rule and claim they needed 60 votes to pass anything. They had the votes to repeal the rule and ignore the Republicans and the blue dogs and do whatever they wanted, but they didn’t. They were very happy to permit an undemocratic rule in an anti-democratic body to serve as their excuse for inaction.
I find Chris Floyd’s take on the Obama presidency more astute than that of Will Wilkinson when he says “But Obama is not “failing”; he is doing exactly what he set out to do: be the president. That’s it. That’s all he wanted to do. And he’s doing it. The panic now emanating from the White House is not that of a man watching a chance to realize his deeply held ideals for a better world slipping away from him; it’s just the flopsweat of a guy trying to stay perched on top of the greasy pole for another term….Obama…stands for nothing; thus nothing he tries to do will stand. He was already hollowed out when he came into office, with a “brand” not an agenda, not a program — and, as becomes increasingly apparent all the time, not a clue.”
Republicans have nearly always been able to peel off a couple Democrats to support their measures, And Republicans platform is much easier to get through the senate’s reconciliation rules then is the Democrat platform.
But yes I see your point, Democrats haven’t made anywhere nearly enough attempts to just shove it through.
The magic here is that most all Republican policy positions and most blue dog Democrat policy positions are not only very similar to one another, they are supported by the corporate interests that fund both parties. There are differences on the social issues, but in most cases the “principled stance” on a social issue is conveniently also a great tactic to stall or block enactment of some legislation that business interests oppose. The Democratic Party “leadership” made the decision quite some time ago to abandon their base (organized labor, minorities and women) and suck up to Wall Street and corporate business interests because they need big money to win elections and their base constituency doesn’t have it.
So why is it that Republicans are consistently able to get more things done than Democrats despite the fact that they are frequently in the minority and never enjoy the kind of majorities that the Democrats are failing to capitalize on?
I recognize what Charles is saying about Republicans and Blue Dogs, but I’m wondering why that is – why is a portion of the Democratic party more closely aligned with the Republicans while there really is no portion of the Republicans more closely aligned with the Democrats (except when it comes to taking our money to fund government leeches like Haliburton and Planned Parenthood – then solid majorities of both parties are completely in harmony with each other)?
There were once liberal Republicans. Senators like Javits, Brooke, and others often worked with Democrats but it seems that those voices have been frozen out of the party. Interesting you mention Planned Parenthood since it seems to me that the abortion issue along with other social issues have been used as a kind of litmus test for Republicans. It is hard to be a pro-choice, pro-marriage equality Republican officeholder these days. There are a few moderate Republicans left in New England, but it appears that the Congressional leadership exercises strong control to keep them from defecting on key votes. One can only wonder what methods are used to get the level of party loyalty we see today.
On the other hand, we see Democrats receiving the full support of their party and the incumbent President of their party whose policy positions are more in tune with moderate to conservative Republicans than with the traditional base of their party. When a moderate Republican runs in a primary, the party generally opposes him and will try to substitute a conservative loyalist. IMHO, the Republican Party base has more consistent views on the issues and will get out and vote for their candidate because they are confident that the candidate will support their values. The Democratic Party tends to support and nominate candidates that support the corporate interests that pay for their campaigns. As a result the policy views of those candidates can differ substantially from those of the party base. That tends to suppress the vote unless the candidate is very charismatic or the Republican opponent is seen as a villain. In more conservative states, that policy difference is not so dramatic.
Any guesses as to why the Republican Party base has more consistent views on the issues while the Democratic Party tends to support and nominate candidates that support the corporate interests?
Also, I think the reason that abortion appears to be a litmus test for Republicans is that the Democrats generally are satisfied with the status quo on that issue – very few of them are pushing for fewer abortion restrictions (as opposed to fewer restrictions on abortion funding). Democrats generally seem to see abortion as a non-issue except when someone passes or proposes new abortion restrictions. On the other hand there are many Republicans who are anything but satisfied with how accessible abortion is and how tolerant the law is of things like late term abortions. If abortion were only available in the first trimester with parental consent required for minors you might well see it as more of a litmus test among Democrats than it is now, and less of a litmus test among Republicans than it is now.
The Democratic Party rank and file tend to oppose corporate interests supporting labor unions, tight regulation, environmental laws, etc., and the Republican party base supports the corporate interests on most policy matters.
I would agree to some extent about the abortion issue. The Supreme Court decision preceded by 5 years the founding of the Moral Majority and its influence in the Republican Party began a bit later. The influx of socially conservative Christian movements into the Republican Party and the importance of those voters to electoral victories certainly moved the party rapidly toward the pro-life position. I doubt that the country club Republicans who dominated party affairs prior to the late 1970’s were particularly concerned about the issue.
I do find there to be some cognitive dissonance between libertarianism and the anti-abortion position and wonder why I don’t hear those views aired in Republican circles where both parties find themselves.
That’s probably because very few Republicans are really libertarian and they prefer to think of the libertarians as too far from the mainstream to deserve much attention. Libertarians, on the other hand, figure they can invade a Democratic party as easily as the Republican party if they are more concerned with the social side of libertarianism than with the economic side of libertarianism.
I had to think about this one a bit. Try as I might, I can’t think of a libertarian Democrat. I’m not sure the philosophies (insofar as the Democratic Party can be said to have a philosophy) are compatible. I also don’t see how one can divorce the social and economic sides of the libertarian approach. If one believes in individual freedom and keeping government out of one’s private decisions in the economic sphere, how does one reconcile that with a desire for the government to prohibit or discourage certain activities?