“I’m like everybody, I want more action. But I understand that [Pres. Obama's] trying not to piss off a lot of people. But I believe wholeheartedly if he’s back in, he’s going to do some gangsta sh—.” – Chris Rock, Politico
Thanksgiving week began with a rhetorical explosion of Democratic, progressive and liberal disgust met with defensiveness, which was a continuation of what’s been building throughout Pres. Obama’s first term. The latest defense comes from the estimable Nicolas Kristoff and joins the list of equally unimpressive efforts, which culminates with this all being about “grumpiness toward the incumbent during a difficult time.” That is another wishfully lame assessment of an American electorate who passed “grumpiness” some time ago.
The quote above from Chris Rock came in early November, but it follows the current mood, as well as what I’ve written many times before about Mr. Obama and entitlements, for instance. Somebody’s going to “reform” entitlements, so everyone needs to decide which is better to get the blame, Democratic or Republican politicians. It’s a fitting end, because the big two parties have gotten us into this mess, which has led to a political system long overdue for upheaval and realignment, which has begun, the completion of which will take years and several election cycles.
Chris Matthews finally let his frustrations out with Alex Witt recently as well. It was one of the more extraordinary events from the notorious career Clinton hater, someone who earned a significant role in my book.
Coming on MSNBC made Matthews’ grousing more amazing, because there isn’t much political reality to be seen from MSNBC’s primetime coterie of hosts. The entire network has taken a dive into Democratic denial, which could be driven by the lack of sanity on the Republican side and betting it’s the smart move, but which is actually decidedly out of sync with most Americans, who are sick of both big two parties. Being the bookend for Fox News Channel might have seemed like a good idea once, but now just comes off as equally unwatchable.
From the interview with Matthews:
“There’s nothing to root for. What are we trying to do in this administration? Why does he want a second term? Would he tell us? What’s he going to do in his second term, more of this? Is this it? Is this as good as it gets? Where are we going?” – Chris Matthews with Alex Witt
What Mr. Matthews still doesn’t understand, though he’s certainly got a lot of company, as Mr. Kristoff proves today, is that even if Pres. Obama answered his questions it wouldn’t mean anything, because it’s coming from a man with no internal compass and people now realize it. Pres. Obama’s style is not moored in leading people to consensus from his own foundational principles that would give us something firm to grasp, but instead is predicated on culling consensus from what’s presented from others, which can change with the wind.
Of course, this in no way means he can’t win reelection. However, there’s a reason Dan Baltz points to the Center for American Progress recent report that states 2012 will be “no election for the faint-hearted.” The uncertainty is also why the news that Democrats are out fundraising Republicans for House races is so important to Democrats, in case Obama loses.
Last week a video circulating had one Obama supporter give a flatly delivered, unenthusiastic case on why he wasn’t disappointed by Pres. Obama, which I rebutted easily with Obama’s history, while simultaneously you had Jonthan Chait give a long-winded whine about liberals. From Chait’s piece:
Harry Truman has become the patron saint of dispirited Democrats, the fighting populist whose example is invariably cited in glum contrast to whatever bumbling congenital compromiser happens to hold office at any given time. In fact, liberals spent the entire Truman presidency in a state of near-constant despair. Republicans took control of Congress in the 1946 elections and bottled up Truman’s domestic agenda, rendering him powerless to expand the New Deal, as liberals had hoped he would after the war had ended. Liberal columnist Max Lerner decried Truman’s mania for “cooperation” and his eagerness “to blink [past] the real social cleavage and struggles,” attributing this pathological eagerness to avoid conflict to his “middle-class mentality.” (Some contemporary critics have reached the same psychoanalysis of Obama, substituting his bi-racial background as the cause.) The New Republic’s Richard Strout lamented how “little evidence he has shown of being able to lift up and inspire the masses.” The historian Richard Pells has written that in the eyes of liberals at the time, “the president remained an incorrigible mediocrity.”
An exception to this trend, but only a partial exception, is Franklin Roosevelt, the most esteemed of the historical Democratic president-saints. Roosevelt is hard to compare to anybody, because his achievements were so enormous, and his failures so large as well (court-packing, interning Japanese-Americans). But even his triumphs, gleaming monuments to liberalism when viewed from the historical distance, appear, at closer inspection, to be riddled with the same tribulations, reversals, compromises, dysfunctions, and failures as any other. Roosevelt did not run for office promising to boost deficit spending in order to stimulate the economy. He ran castigating Herbert Hoover for permitting high deficits, then immediately passed an austerity budget in his first year. Roosevelt did come around to Keynesian stimulus, but he never seemed to understand it, and in 1937 he reversed himself again by cutting spending, helping plunge the economy into a second depression eventually mitigated only by war spending.
I’ve written, as Chait did this past week, on J.F.K. being dragged to civil rights by Martin Luther King, Jr. In my book, in a chapter titled “Blaming Bill” that makes a similar case on liberal schizophrenia, I also write about Bill Clinton’s mistake on derivatives, his help campaigning and electing Blue Dog Democrats while making labor the villain, not to mention Clinton’s free trade penchant, which is being channeled by Pres. Obama, as the former president’s economic policies make the latter’s possible. It’s juxtaposed against the pastime of progressives to blame Bill Clinton for everything, which is often cited by Obama fans as what’s happening to our current president, though I also lay out a conclusive case of just how different the situations were for these two men entering the presidency.
See, contrary to my “die hard Clintonite” mantle (given to me by the Washington Post, no less), I’m no stranger to Democratic discontent. It’s why my recovering partisan present is a natural. In fact, anyone paying attention to my history of writing going back into the ’90s will see that it’s the one constant in my life, seen best in my vote for Reagan in ’80.
Chait resurrects a beauty from the history books on that one:
The Times’ editorial board captured the liberal view of the era when it relayed the joke of a voter with a gun to his head who’s asked to choose between Carter and Ronald Reagan and replies, “Shoot.”
So furious was I at Carter, a combination born out of waiting in gas lines in New York City, a place in decline at the time, while watching the hostage crisis play out, with Teddy Kennedy’s hopes going up in smoke with Roger Mudd, it made voting for Reagan easy. Anger’s like that at the voting booth; emotion a powerfully irrational catalyst.
Who can forget candidate Obama hoisting Ronald Reagan up as an example over William Jefferson Clinton time and again? Chait does it as well. However, Mr. Chait ends his attempt at defending Pres. Obama with a thank you to his critics. Oh, the irony, which he misses completely, making his own defense of the President schizophrenic.
Republican Reagan-worship is a product of a pro-authority mind-set that liberals, who inflate past heroes only to criticize their contemporaries, cannot match. If recent history is any guide, they are simply not capable of having that kind of relationship with a president. They are going to question their leader, not deify him, and search for signs of betrayal in any act of compromise he or she may commit. This exhausting psychological torment is no way to live. Then again, the current state of the Republican Party suggests it may be healthier than the alternative.
It brings me back to a place I know well. Not so much looking for an ideological leader, as a human being with an unflinching compass and undeniable character to stand up against Congress and politicians of both parties. A lightning rod of a person who rails at the injustices and isn’t afraid of anything, including outcome. An individual outside of the corporate and political systems that has brought us to the brink.
However, even though this person no doubt exists somewhere it won’t matter as things stand today. Because the system our founders put together wasn’t driven by two locked in ideological political parties that after two hundred years have reached the only ending they could: stalemate.
In the end our American democratic republic wasn’t made from political parties, but from a diverse group of leaders standing on their own principles, as well as self interest, with compromise and deals made possible out of necessity, not ideology. There is no necessity to compromise today because the political parties to which our politicians belong won’t allow this natural occurrence to manifest. The only thing that can alter that fact is more political individuals elected outside the system.
But first we have to tear the two party system down, which is what the Tea Party began doing, with Occupy Wall Street offering another angle, which holds more hope, because there is not party alliance at its hub, though it’s clear there are more similarities with Democratic principles at its core.
As an side, Libertarianism, as seen through politicians like Ron Paul, the only person talking war and peace in real terms, offers an alliance for Democrats and even Republicans sick to death of the militancy of their own conservative wings, which has gained more ground under Pres. Obama. But again, this can only happen with more independent minded and not beholden to party politicians getting elected.
It won’t be done completely in 2012, but the system has already begun to shake. The bad news is that we are going to elect a few more weak leaders before it’s over. That’s the case whether Barack Obama gets reelected or Mitt Romney takes the presidency, though the case for Mitt with some will lie in what might be possible from him, which comes coupled with what is known not to work already with Pres. Obama.
The likelihood that the American electorate will just keep throwing the bums out until we reach a moment when the person we’re electing means more than the party he or she represents is where American politics is being pushed today.
Voting for a Democratic or Republican politician simply because of their brand simply isn’t working anymore. Certainly we can all at least agree on that.
