D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
January 2010
Another Fine Mess
Is America headed the way of California — becoming ungovernable?
New Year's messages — particularly those at the start of a new decade — are supposed to be filled with hope for the future and brave talk about how we'll face tomorrow's challenges together, holding hands and singing "Kumbaya." As a difficult, divisive year passes into the history books and an even more strife-filled year of midterm elections begins, however, the proper rah-rah spirit proves elusive. Even last January, in the depths of the worst economic downturn since 1929, optimism seemed easier to grasp: We had an energetic new president who embodied turning the page on the past and talked boldly of bridging the nation's partisan divide. It was, indeed, the dawning of a brave new world.
If nothing else, 2009 serves as a bitter reminder of the irony inherent in that quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest:
"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"
You could apply many adjectives to the protesters who rallied last fall outside the US Capitol waving signs that depicted piles of bodies at Dachau, captioned "National Socialist Healthcare," but "beauteous" would not be among them.
While America has always had a lunatic fringe, what's alarming about the political scene as 2010 begins is that it's no longer confined to the fringe. As Paul Krugman noted in The New York Times, that rally with its Hitler references was sponsored by the House Republican leadership, with senior lawmakers in attendance. Did these leaders disavow the extremism on display? "Not very helpful" was the strongest condemnation Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, could muster.
This is not to pick on the Republicans — Democrats had their own loony paranoiacs when they were the party out of power. The problem, as Krugman put it, is that "the GOP has been taken over by the people it used to exploit." Since 1968, Republicans have achieved electoral success in part by playing on paranoia and — to be brutally honest — racism (as any objective appraisal of Nixon's "Southern strategy" would have to conclude). But once in power, they've catered more to Wall Street than to the element that historian Richard Hofstadter presciently described in a 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," who believe that: "America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion."
Until 2008, the GOP could count on the votes of this angry element without actually having to deliver more than symbolism. But a sort of "perfect storm" of political and social changes has altered that equation: the brutal recession, the election of the first African-American president, a power vacuum in the GOP leadership that's been filled by talk radio and Fox News, the failure of American institutions as epitomized by the Iraq war and the deficit, the realization by white America that its majority days are numbered.
So now, instead of a "loyal opposition," we have Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. "Because these people aren't interested in actually governing," Krugman pointed out, "they feed the base's frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it." Republicans define themselves only as in opposition to President Obama's policies, without offering genuine alternatives or solutions.
While that approach has succeeded in eroding Obama's popularity and dragging down the Democrats — who scored only a 39% approval rating in a new CNBC poll — it's been even harder on the Republicans themselves: That same poll gave the GOP only a 26% approval rating.
But the state of the GOP is only a symptom of what's ailing America. That same CNBC poll found that only 39% of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court, 24% in the Federal Reserve, 19% in the US Treasury, 18% in FEMA and 15% in Congress. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 65% of respondents trust the government in Washington to do the right thing "only some of the time," while an alarming 11% said "never."
It's not just government we don't trust: Only 17% have confidence in health-insurance companies, according to the CNBC poll, 10% in the financial industry.
In another recent New York Times column, Thomas L. Friedman suggests a half-dozen reasons for the fracturing of "our public space" and paralyzing of "our ability to forge optimal solutions" to the nation's challenges:
- The pervasive influence of money in politics, putting politicians in the pockets of special interests.
- The gerrymandering of political districts "means politicians of each party can now choose their own voters and never have to appeal to the center."
- The "cable TV culture" that "encourages shouting and segregates people into their own political echo chambers."
- A permanent presidential campaign that "leaves little time for governing."
- The Internet, which "at its worst provides a home for every extreme view and spawns digital lynch mobs."
- A US business community so globalized that it no longer speaks in the national interest.
Both Krugman and Friedman warn that these trends threaten the "Californiafication" of the whole country, making the US as ungovernable as that state has become. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proven incapable of "terminating" California's dysfunction, Friedman notes, adding, "A lot of the disappointment settling in among Obama voters today is prompted by the dawning realization that maybe, like Arnold, he can't" fix what seems broken in our body politic.
But does the fault really lie with our elected leaders? It's true, to give the Democrats' failings equal time here, that Reid, Pelosi et al have proven startlingly inept at holding the reins of power handed them in the 2008 elections. Health-care reform, in particular, has unfolded in a Frankenstein's monster-like shambling of fits and starts. People elected as Democrats — such as our own Rep. Harry Teague, about whom more in the next item — have reneged on their campaign pledges and joined what Jonathan Chait of The New Republic calls "Republican nihilists."
Right here in New Mexico, as we observed in this space last issue, Gov. Bill Richardson has presided over a spending spree that would make drunken sailors blush — and now we're all having to pay the piper.
No wonder 13% of those in the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll said they have a negative view of both parties.
But what, we wonder, would really happen if a politician — from either party — found the courage to propose tough yet necessary solutions to what ails America? Dramatic and difficult changes in Social Security to insure its long-term viability. A big hike in the federal gas tax to help break our addiction to foreign oil. Deep cuts in your favorite government giveaway or entitlement program to address the deficit.