Today I watched the country inaugurate Barack Hussein Obama as our 44th president. After the extended campaign, the election hoopla, and the vigorous transition period, in some ways the event felt more like an end than a beginning. People who support Obama have made him the favored vessel of our hopes and promises for almost two years. But now we are going to have to leave the gratifying, at times self-righteous world of ideas and rhetoric and get down to the messy business of policymaking. It won't be fun over the next 4-8 years to put our ideals through the sausage-grinder of politics.I thought it would be ugly, but at least I thought the sausage would get made. Now I'm increasingly of the view that this last year has witnessed what will be remembered in history as a breakdown in American politics. As you've no doubt read elsewhere, this is not only my view. But in DC I found it striking how this conventional wisdom has solidified so quickly.
The election of Obama has provoked the reactionary elements of the political spectrum into fervent opposition. At the same time, a sharp economic recession has undermined faith in government and the market alike. The result is an example of what has been called the paranoid style in American politics, a populist, reactionary movement that hates the government, but also hates the problems government is needed to solve. Catch 22. A few months ago I thought we would have real progress on health care, financial reform, and climate change this year. Now I'd be overjoyed to have moderate progress on just one of these.
The Republicans have tried to ride this sentiment by obstructing every initiative the Administration takes, regardless of its merits. The collegiality that made the Senate a functional deliberating body has been lost to partisanship, which means, with a 60-40 split, that every Senator has come to have a de facto veto over legislation. The situation might be better if the Democrats had a more competent leader than Harry Reid, but I doubt any individual could make a huge difference in what I see now as a broken legislative house. You know things are bad when a senior government official tells you she thinks a constitutional amendment is needed.
The United States is verging on the un-governable. If the economy recovers and the Administration learns how to stand up to the obstructionist minority party, I think we can still walk back from the brink. But if the November elections lead to a divided government--a strong possibility without a sharp drop in unemployment--then all the optimism and hope we were swimming in just a year ago is going to look like a sad, sad delusion.
6 comments:
oh, debbie downer.
at least we still have KFC.
that's why we vote for berlusconi every time. so we don't get our hopes up!
Watch the Friday Q&A from the House Republican retreat. It gives me hope that Obama's respect and integrity will put a little sunshine on the rot that is our political system.
well put tom.
Interesting link to the Harper magazine.
On Obama:
You also overlooked that he didn't cut the defense budget he asked for more money to fight in the future.. and that's not pollution but wars!
The health reform, might be good for a couple of individuals but not to improve the economic situation and therefore the conditions of the many.. Reacting to the setback on health reform with killing prop trading really will not get you anywhere.
Contrary to popular misconception, prop trading is not the banking robbers that fudge numbers and steal from others, prop trading is the way in which banks can manage the risk to transform short term liabilities into long term ones ( meaning allowing every single small and big business to buy goods to sell, borrow money to place orders and allow people to withdraw their pension from a cash machine).
There is a time for everything and at the moment the issue is the Housing mkt, the easiest and quickest solution would have been to destroy all the unsold stock of houses and rebuild them again. That would have given jobs to people, made price rise, shifted the negative equities of many households into positive, allowing them to borrow to spend and revive the economy, reduce unemployment, reduce foreclosures and relieve many families, so that instead of having to eat a big Mac for a $ could afford to purchase an organic chicken for $50.
But that's not a possible solution.
The issue is not the president however, it's human tendency to blame somebody for their greed.
"the easiest and quickest solution would have been to destroy all the unsold stock of houses and rebuild them again"
That, for me, sums up the insanity of the way we have chosen to order our affairs: apparently a bigger GDP is always better, and I can make it bigger by vandalising everything we already own and then paying to replace it.
What sort of fucked up economic system and measures are we using if the "solution" to a problem is to destroy servicable goods only to consume more of the planet's [finite] resources to replace them?
Show me an economic system that can properly quantify a baby and fresh air and sunsets and beauty (the benefits as well as the cash costs) and I will listen more attentively to proposed "solutions" which lead to better results in that system.
At the moment, we have a closed, partial system where the key players are the only ones to propose "solutions", and those, mysteriously, always seem to have the result that bankers get richer.
Obama and the hype of hope? Well, to quote (ex-)London Mayor Ken Livingstone, no human in history has ever appeared more sexually desirable as a result of saying "I told you so" but, well, er, I told you so. Before his election he looked to me like the impossible dream of 1997 Tony Blair, and we all know how well that turned out. And at least there is still some time left for Obama to do some good and to minimise some of the evil.
Post a Comment