Preaching to the Choir at the Church of Politics

Breakdown of political party representation in the United States House of Representatives.

Politics is especially divisive and messy today.  Everyone knows that.  And just to get it out there at the beginning, I am not going to pretend this is a bi-partisan issue.  What fails American politics today is an unbalance of discursive power.

Generally speaking the left accedes to the right a contrite sense of shared responsibility for our political failings.  Blame is not a bi-partisan issue and the right knows it.  They are not honest about it, of course, but they don’t care and they are happy to confuse the issue.  The right swings blame like a giant hammer, knocking off opponents with rhetorical ease.

Case in point…compare offers of compromise from the conservative right with those of the left.  First off, you have a hard time finding examples of compromise from the right, and when it does happen those politicians put their careers in jeopardy.  In fact search “compromise” and “Republican” and you likely find a story about the so-called Tea Party condemning a political leader.

And when was the last time — any time, in fact — that you read about a Republican taking any responsibility for our current economic decline.  It is all Barak Obama’s fault.  (Find counter examples and post them in the comments section here.  I need to see some sign of hope.)

Romney For President

Not everyone on the conservative right is an idiot, however.  Smart people there know that our economic malaise is not President Obama’s fault.  First of all he hasn’t been able to get much in the way of policy to do much, good or bad.   Ultimately that is neither here nor there when it comes to politics.    Congress makes policy proposal law.  President Obama does not.  It is so much easier to blame someone else, is it not?  Facts and procedures merely get in the way of power.

This problem will only get worse through the next four months, and almost certainly beyond.  To understand this we only need to see what has become of political “leadership.”

Politicians are not so much leaders as much as they are preachers, and they preach to their increasingly dogmatic followers.  All that will happen between now and November is a lot of blah, blah, blah.  Sadly — I will insist — the failure of leadership falls most firmly on the side of conservatives because they have the ability to engage the power of Congress.  But they won’t do it.

Since 2008, failure is the goal of successful GOP politics.  As long as Barak Obama is in power, success is not an option.

Take the economy as an example.  At a government level, there isn’t much we can do to turn things around.  The primary government players include Congress, the President, and the Federal Reserve.  Of these three, the only one that possesses any meaningful power to act is Congress.  Even during the best of times the President is a minor player, drumming up a party platform and selling it.  The president has very little direct effect on the economy, always has and, unless we change the Constitution, always will.  Congress enacts laws, the President enforces them.

The Federal Reserve hasn’t much it can do either, but it has become sport to blame the Reserve as a de facto wing of the Obama presidency.  In truth, policy options there are tapped out.  All the Federal Reserve can do now is monitor and report.  No one really pays attention anyway, especially politicians.

From a government policy option, Congress has the most power.  If there is an answer in the short term, it will come from Congress, not Obama.  Sadly, we would be in much better shape this were not true.  If President Barak Obama did in fact wield the power conservatives claim he has in hurting the economy, we would be in much better shape today.

But wait a minute, don’t you hear your Republican leaders preaching a sermon about saving American jobs, the economy, and the middle class?  Are they not worried about your children and grandchildren?  They have hijacked that rhetorical trope and, in the face of the facts, get away with it.

Help for a stronger economy is up to a Republican Congress and therefore we can expect nothing.  The party of wrack and ruin needs a depressed economy to maintain its hold on power.

Moreover Republicans use class warfare to divide America.  This enables them to rollback sound economic policy that once supported America’s prominence and power — Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill — but that shining city is inconsistent with an increasingly paranoid and ignorant conservative ideology that has a long list of social issues to push.

The United States has done a lot of things wrong, according current conservative dogma.  It began taking care of its citizens, protecting its environment, and investing in the future of a shared common good.  Increasingly the rights of the minority were protected against the wishes of intolerant majorities.  But these things cannot stand.  I don’t know, maybe success and shared prosperity ruined us, leading us astray of Christian values.  That isn’t exactly the conservative narrative, but what else in our country’s shining past would cause our ruin?

Conservatives tried to divide us on permissive social issues and largely failed.  Now they divide us on economic issues and succeed.  In a country so enthralled with the myth of independence, this works.

So what can we do?

I don’t hold out much hope in converting the right to joining the left.  It won’t happen.  But I believe a majority of Americans do in fact understand where their long-term best interests are served.  It isn’t in the disastrous policies of conservative politics — politics that too many liberals supported as well in recent years — but in a future that values shared investment and cooperation.

America’s future depends on a progressive majority turning out to vote.  It is that simple.  Apathy is a bigger threat than ignorance at this point.  It is too late to expect some sort of intellectual enlightenment among the dogmatic right.  The disengaged middle doesn’t strike me as a crowd that will study the facts of policy history (they are uncertain for a reason).  Instead it is time to rally.

If you don’t like the way our country looks today, don’t vote for the people who put us here.  Save the country.  Don’t vote Republican.

Related articles

• Roberts scorned for not being sufficiently activist and political (pwtenny.newsvine.com)
• Religious right’s new rivals (salon.com)
• Politics and the Supreme Court (polentical.com)
• 5 Ways Republicans Have Sabotaged Job Growth (thinkprogress.org)
• Did Republicans Deliberately Crash the US Economy? (economistsview.typepad.com)

What President Obama Should Do…

Reading the papers this weekend you can find a lot of smart commentary about our political and economic situation.  Plenty of people get it.  Unfortunately the loudest voices drawing the most attention seem to be the least informed and most destructive.  We’re not in polite society anymore and the nation’s future is at risk.  So it is time to stop pretending that Republicans — and Tea Partiers especially — are well-intended good Americans with valid political ideas.  They’re not.

Anything Barak Obama will propose to help the economy will be shot down.  Republicans haven’t a clue and anyway they benefit politically if unemployment stays high and the economy remains depressed.  Obama shouldn’t expect any cooperation from conservatives and he should stop trying to work with them.  Move on, let them implode.  But he can only do this if he offers a strong alternative to their anti-government whining.

At the very least, the president should do all he can not to legitimize their narrative by trying to co-opt their fears and policy positions.  It is pointless.  Even worse, it is destructive.  There isn’t a valid idea anywhere from the right.  None.  That is an intellectual wasteland hijacked by religious zealots.  Get away from those ideas.

President Obama should set the tone and agenda for his presidency; he should make the bastards come to him and not the other way around.  The lesser half of American politics is lost anyway.  They won’t come around.  Promote smart solutions to the people with a head for solutions.

More importantly, our president must focus on engaging better, smarter Americans, especially the battered middle class.  He needs to create a narrative that is his own and repeat that message over and over and over again.  Instead of a gutless “Grand Bargain,” give us a grand plan.  Explain the history and economics behind sound government stimulus during a time of recession.  Educate and motivate America’s intelligence behind legitimate economic solutions, don’t wallow in the insanity of the misguided policies that have to this point wrecked our society and economy.

There really isn’t much of a fight for the opinions of the educated and informed voter.  Republicans have a list of presidential wannabes that defy common sense and civic responsibility; these are not legitimate leaders and enough people are smart enough to understand this to keep them from winning an election, but only if the president engages smarter voters.  Apathy could kill this country in a hurry if we face a President Perry or President Romney.

But these people are not an immediate threat, not yet.  They’re still tussling with each other in primaries.  Now is the time to offer a strong solution, sell it, and get started on a path to winning re-election.

About Getting Things Done

You Have to Think These People Would Expect More of Us…

I’m feeling a little hot and ranty today…

Now that summer is over…it is in my book, anyway…I am going to focus on my much-promised, never-delivered program to get organized and get things done.  You will know I am serious because rather than go out for a glass of wine to celebrate the changing season with friends, I am home thinking about this.  (I want to have a good start on better habits BEFORE the resolution-making season at the end of the year.)

And there’s so much to do…

Hell, we have dangerous villains and freaks lurking damn near everywhere.  Have you noticed?  No, not beatniks and vampires…omething worse, much worse.  This gang goes by the once-respectable cover known as Republicans.

And it gets worse…

We have a ninny for a president fighting them.  Seriously…why are Republicans going to the expense and effort to try to replace Obama?  Love the status quo?  Don’t change anything.   Sadly, for as long as we have a dicombobulated public that doesn’t know left from right, does it really matter to the GOP agenda if Obama stays or goes?  Think about it.

It is bleak, but it could be fun, too, you know…in a dark and twisted way.  Where’s your sense of adventure?  Dark times, yes…but exciting, too.  Mother always said the monsters in horror films where make believe and the Nazi’s went away years ago.  But now look!  Living in America today is like being in some real life horror film or war film…and everyone has the chance to be…oh, I don’t know, Anthony Edwards in Miracle Mile.

Well, ok…maybe I am bit off…I enjoy my gallows humor…but do we wait for things to really get really, really bad before acting?  What’s the alternative?  What will life be like in a post-democratic America?  It is hard to say, but I see a lot of high-fructose corn syrup in our future.  We ain’t getting any better, are we?  Politics in this country suffers under the very heavy burden of extreme right wing ideology.  The situation is not moderating toward compromises that offer solutions, but sliding even further toward the edge by the pull of an extremist anti-government agenda.

On the bright side, however, I am going to start getting things done!  We might end up living in an America led by the Christian Taliban, but I am still going to get things done.  In fact, looking into the future I think I might be able to match my sales experience with my creative skills and come up with things that might be useful in a post-democratic America.  Maybe something like designer cases for voter ID cards or faux book covers that make that copy of Dickens or Mailer … or whatever subversive literature you’re reading … look like a proper Christian bible.  Oh, the little games we’ll get to play while we try to avoid being imprisoned for vagrancy or shot for heresy…how much fun!  And fun will be the key to coping with a more stupid and less free America.

But I should stop being so flippantly pessimistic and start doing something positive for the country.  I have asked more than one Republican to leave, but that doesn’t seem to work.  They like the lazy blameless lifestyle that better generations created for them.  Of course they don’t realize that their children and grandchildren will suffer miserably and probably die at a younger age than they will, but they’re Republicans and Republicans are not used to thinking about things, especially the future or other people.

But damn it, I think, and you think too!  It is time to stop pretending that Republicans offer a legitimate and sane voice in America today.  That elephant fell off the cliff a generation ago.  It is time to get up and say something to counter the backwardness of the right.  This is a serious civil rights issue, it is a dangerous social issue.  Our future is going to hell in a handbasket as the foundation of this country is being destroyed.  Time to speak up people.  Democracy isn’t dead quite yet.  You can still vote in America…most of us can, anyway, and they’re busy trying to change that…so vote!

So here is my Get it Done challenge for the day.  Good people (obviously excluding the demented people on the right), find a way to get politically active and stick to it.  And for Christ’s sake…vote!  And don’t vote for some independent.  I used to do that.  It’s a waste.  We live with a flawed two-party system and when the other side is as bad as it is today there is no room for voter protest.

In review…get politically active…it doesn’t have to be a big deal, but do something.  Send a couple bucks to a Democrat candidate’s campaign.  Make a phone call or write an editorial.  At the very least don’t be silent when you hear stupidity talked on the street.  Friends will listen.  And above all else, save your country…don’t vote Republican!

One last thing…a post script…read Daring to Say the F-Word.  Might seem a little alarmist to some, but the concerns he raises are legit.  We are losing democratic power to narrow interests and the country is worse off because of it.

Obama, Reid, Pelosi…I Feel Your Pain

A post that is at least somewhat related to sales is far overdue here at A Little Tour in Yellow.  I have been a chronic whiner and complainer (with plenty to whine and complain about, no denying that), and it is time to turn things around just a touch.  I won’t — as the title of this post suggests – abandon politics altogether, however, but I will instead relate my day-to-day struggles in the field as a salesman with the much more important struggles in Washington politics.

Here’s what’s up:  I can empathize — at least as much as my experience will allow — with the emotions and frustrations our good leaders (i.e., Democrats) must experience when they struggle with unsophisticated, perhaps ignorant (or at least uninformed) people who hold a recklessly high opinion of themselves despite their backwardness (i.e., most Republicans).

John Boehner.

Trust me, I have seen the blank Dumbo stare that Pelosi or Obama must see when they try to get through to John Boehner.  There are people who simply do not have the personality, intelligence, or maybe the sophistication to understand rational thought; they fail to recognize their own best interests and conclude that anything they are responsible for doing is a good thing, regardless of how harmful it is.  These people act as if they have no connection with reality and harbor a secret death drive that causes them to act so inauthentically.    (I wonder what Spinoza–I think– would say about this morality, or Nietzsche.  Is deliberate abuse or irresponsible intellect entitled to a serious question of morality…or are these people simply bad?  Sorry.)

In my line of work I deal with people unable to think strategically about costs, investments, and profits, but they only sink their ventures.  Today we have been electing too many people cut from the very same mold — so-callled job creators like Michele Bachman — and when they sink, we all sink.

Guiding a business owner through concepts like return on investment is a favorite example of how people might not get it.  It sometimes gets to the point where I can say to a client:  So you don’t think making a return in profits that multiplies your investment is a good idea for your business?  And they’ll answer “No.”

It isn’t about the profits, they’ll say.  It is about the expense.  “Sure, I would love to make an extra $100,000 next quarter, but I have to cut my expenses.  I can’t keep paying you $10,000.”

Today’s Republican leaders seem to think the same way, but with spite.  They would rather cut and run leaving future “profits” in the form of economic gain suffer in the interest of what they think is a short-term gain.  I’m sure Obama and the rest sit across the table and spell it all out with all the easily understood facts a reasonably intelligent person would need to make a smart decision, but then…you get that dumpy Dumbo stare.  Is he going to cry, laugh, spit up?  Is he awake?

That’s where I think today’s GOP betrays the United States.  They understand the stakes and don’t care.  They will gladly let everything go to hell in a handbasket.  Frankly, it wouldn’t hurt them much politically if it did anyway.  They are skilled at blaming everyone else for the problems they cause.  And short term survival matters more than long term gains anyway.  Very irresponsible.

We see this in sales all the time.  You can have the best product or service and present it flawlessly, but the person you are trying to do business with isn’t there.  They don’t grasp a thing.  Or maybe there is a certain inexplicable stubbornness that can’t be sorted out.  Who knows?   A salesman can only do so much and a smart salesman cuts his losses and moves on.

In politics, however, especially with the almost intentionally destructive tenor of politics today, a strategy of cutting of losses isn’t all that smart in the winner take all game that’s being played now.

So like a good salesman with a valuable product to sell, our politicians can roll out there best stuff…but sometimes there’s no one at the other end to buy.  There’s only a blank dumb stare.  Our Democratic leaders have much more at stake than a commission.  They, at least, realize they have a responsibility to all of us.  If it is hard to walk away from a smart deal in sales, imagine what it must be like if you are tethered to an impossible task that you can’t walk away from, cannot afford to lose and yet cannot win.

Stubborn self-serving stupidity is ruining this country.

 

 

What do Democrats and this Fortune Cookie Have in Common?

Democratic Party Platform?

I have been feeling a bit deflated because this fortune cookie seems to be both so taunting and vague.  But Mark Price posted a link on Twitter that makes me think this fortune cookie really could be adopted as the slogan for today’s Democrats.  Not that it should, mind you, but it certainly could.

Anyway, if Democrats are feeling a bit deflated, perhaps they too see something both taunting and vague in Democratic leadership.

The evidence is everywhere and a good example of the thinking supporting my thesis is in an article posted by Mark Price.  It is a blog post by Jared Bernstein , an occassional contributor on fiscal and economic issues on network television and one-time economic advisor to the Obama White House.  I can’t say I know that Mr. Bernstein is a Democrat, but most people would certainly agree that he is a liberal economist and has advised our Democratic president.

No need to go into a lot of detail here regarding the article.  As far as my point is concerned, the article speaks for itself.  There is a sort of ironic tone about it.  Democrats today seem to think that the best way to fight a good fight is to wait until the other side gets bored or implodes or maybe just goes away.  Democrats have always been a little too accommodating, it is why they don’t march lock-step to single defined agenda and spew the same talking points, true or not.  But doesn’t Mr. Bernstein’s position here just throw in the towel?

Bernstein is saying there are many things we should be doing to change the bleak job situation in the United States.  He agrees with arguments Paul Krugman made recently about how a WPA-style works program would both put people to work and give a good economic boost to our sluggish economy, for example.  These are things we should do…and, in fact, we could be doing them, too.

But with the likes of Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan “ascending” in Washington, maybe we chicken out a little.  Bernstein seems to say so even as he says we shouldn’t go that far.  He asks Paul Krugman to write an article or two that deal with what we could do versus what we should do.  In short, Bernstein is conceding.  He’s saying because the right has its way — and power — we need to be a realist and do what we can do.  Well…yes and no and maybe.  Look at it this way, if you were going into a boxing ring with Mike Tyson and you felt pretty sure you were going to lose, would you show up entirely unprepared?  Maybe leave the gloves at home?

If you take this kind of thinking into politics, presumably waiting for a better day to beat your opponent, then this definitely sounds like a “good things will come in due course of time” strategy.  In the meantime you will get clobbered!  And let me ask, as I did in a previous post, what exactly is “due course of time” and what are these “good things” we can expect?  Democrats need some leadership here.

Democrats need to at least start defining — and re-defining — an agenda on the left.  We can’t get in a situation where we are always trying to remake the Right’s crazy ideas.  Democrats should aggressively promote labor, economic, and health care reforms of its own.  Define a starting point and defend it.  Right now all the messaging is coming from the likes of Cantor and Ryan … and even crazier people like Palin, Paul, and Bachmann … and where is the answer from the left?  If we listen to Bernstein it seems to be a rather timid answer at best.

Put your gloves on!

 

Get Out and Vote!

Bill or Rights. It is Worth Looking at Again.

Especially if you’re a Democrat.

Did I say I was going to keep politics out of this blog?  If I did, I reserve the right to an exception. 

I just finished scanning the online version of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and took in as much of the Readers’ Comments as I could stand.  I am hopeful that the comments from the right represent a minority fringe, but I have my doubts.  I come from a state that elects Michele Bachmann, after all, and has an entire cast of like-minded bit players behind her.  We even have a knuckle head governor, Tim Pawlenty, who is who he is today because of the progressive policies of better government all of us — rich and poor alike — enjoyed thirty years ago.   Timmy has grown up, however, and moved from his roots in South St. Paul both in a real physical way, but in an even more profound and real ideological way.

And I fear that the country has done the same.  I might have been getting at that idea when I wrote about the Sock Market a few posts earlier.  Things are changing and it is hard to see how they are changing for the better.

Optimistic Public Servants. We Need More of These.

By most indices, the United States is worst off today than it was 30 years ago.  Reading the New York Times today was depressing.  We have an out of control mercenary war in Iraq and Afghanistan that is costly beyond its economic impact.  There are people running for major political offices — Senate and House of Representative seats — that don’t know enough about our government to cite any Supreme Court rulings or understand the implications of the Bill of Rights.  Our economy is in shambles due to overly-leveraged derivatives and speculative investing, but recovery has been framed in terms of government spending and taxes.  And we have a growing number of Americans willing to accept anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric as gospel even as it has no foundation or substance.

In short…I think we are becoming a nation of quitters.  The GOP has become the petulant schoolyard bully who causes trouble and blames everyone else.  No…perhaps Eddie Haskell is a better model describing today’s GOP.  All smiles and sweetness while taking credit for undeserved praise and a mischievous troublemaker when no one is paying attention.  I tell you what, it is time for people to pay attention.

Government is not inherently bad, but bad government is.  (It is called a tautology.)  We have bad government almost by design.  Grover Norquist and others, riding on Reagan’s coat tails, took the “government is the problem” deception and rallied behind that to “starve the beast,” i.e., deliberate underfunding of government.  If we cannot pay for it (because we underfund it by design), then we must cut it.  A brilliant and obvious trick that most people don’t understand, not even now. 

Government has become a problem because it has been vilified for thirty years and disemboweled because of it.  We have become a modern banana republic, an almost state-less government for the wealthy elite who have as a result siphoned off increasingly more billions and billions for private accounts and foreign investors.  Today, more than any other time since 1928 if not beyond, the wealthiest one percent hold more earnings and savings than ever before.  Meanwhile incomes for both working and middle class Americans has been flat or declining in real dollars.  We are witnessing the decline of the middle class.

So what has all of the supply-side, trickle down small government approach gotten us?  Where is the benefit that the political right wants to protect and seemingly so many people are willing to support with their votes?

We have struggling schools and bridges that literally collapse into rivers.  Issues like water quality and worker safety are getting worse, not better.  We rank somewhere around 15th globally for college graduation rates and in no indice such as science or math do U S Students rank at the top.  More and more people are facing financial hardship and people literally die because private for-profit health care rations care for the sake of earnings.  (We are willing to squander billions to kill foreigners in misguided wars, but raise a fit if we want to spend the same to save lives of our own citizens.  Something is amiss there.)

All you need is a little objective history, an understanding of economics, and some common sense to see how far we have strayed from smart governance.  Government is our collective investment in what we value today and what we want for the future.  It isn’t some black hole that steals freedom and plays Robin Hood with earnings and wealth.  Does anyone really think that kind of negative approach built the strong government institutions that enabled so much success in our past? 

And if government were such a bad thing, why do we thrive when government is strong?  We have been demonizing government for three decades now and look at where we are today compared with thirty years ago.  It isn’t good.  Not by any measure.

We had eight years of George W. Bush and two years of Barak Obama.  Impatience will kill us.  We need to support the different policies that were so enthusiastically embraced by voters two years ago.  We have, in fact, more than just George Bush’s faults to recover from.  We have an entire era of limited non-progressive thinking to respond to.  We also have a stubborn and destructive Republican Party set on nothing but failure.  Since when has it been patriotic to plot failure for our country?

Nevertheless, in two years good things have happened.  Not good enough, but better things can happen.  It is hard to see, however, how better thing can happen if we allow ourselves a return to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

Related Articles

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