In the wake of the Tucson shootings, President Obama has launched his latest version of post-partisanship. It seems to be serving him well. His approval ratings are up, Republicans have slightly toned down the rhetoric, and the President is in his favorite stance as the man who bridges differences.
Obama has gestured right by appointing centrists to top positions and embracing a pro-business rhetoric decrying regulatory excess, but also appeased the Democratic base by wisely rejecting calls to put Social Security on the chopping block. Based on his video to supporters, he will call both for deficit reduction in the long term but increased anti-recession spending now, knowing that Republicans won't give him a nickel.
All this will help position him to win re-election in 2012. Having frothing-at-the-mouth Republicans control the House may well be better for Obama than having to deal with a frustrated Democratic Congressional majority.
If you liked Bill Clinton as Triangulator, you will love the era of Triangulation II. The danger, of course, is that the man at the apex of the triangle fares better than his party.
He is now Mr. Reasonable Centrist -- except that in substance there is no reasonable center to be had.
A well funded and tightly organized right wing has been pulling American politics to the right for three decades now. And with a few instructive exceptions, Democrats who respond by calling for a new centrism are just acting as the right's enablers.
What exactly is the beneficial substance of this centrism? Just how far right do we have to go for Republicans to cut any kind of deal? Isn't the mirage of a Third Way a series of moving targets -- where every compromise begets a further compromise?
Democrats once played this game well, in reverse. In the period when Democrats dominated and set the national agenda, it was Republicans who moved to the center.
Eisenhower (who was seriously considered as a possible Democratic presidential candidate) accepted the New Deal, and launched large new spending programs like the interstate highway system. Nixon proposed a guaranteed annual income law, sponsored a national health program slightly to the left of Obama's, and signed one bill after another expanding health, safety and environmental regulation. Democrats defined the center.
But for at least two decades, Republican themes -- privatize, deregulate, shrink government, cut taxes, liberate business -- have been ascendant, while life for regular people has become more precarious, and too many Democrats have embraced Republican-lite.
If you look back over the past several administrations, in most bipartisan compromises it was usually the Democrats who got rolled. The last major policy compromise where the right gave serious ground was the Social Security rescue of 1983.
The 1986 tax reform was supposed to cut rates and close loopholes, but at the end of the day the tax code became less progressive and the business elite went right on inventing new loopholes. If President Obama proposes another tax reform in this spirit, watch out.
The 1996 welfare reform, a bipartisan compromise so punitive that three of Clinton's sub-cabinet experts resigned in protest, cut the welfare rolls, but inflicted huge hardship on poor people. As long as there was full employment, the damage was disguised. With unemployment in excess of nine percent, the massive hole in the safety net stands revealed.
No Child Left Behind was a massive case of bait-and-switch. Bush II offered Democrats more federal spending in exchange for higher national standards. The real result was a plague of teach-to-the-test requirements, the better to bash public schools and soften up public opinion for voucher schools -- and not nearly enough federal aid.
Even the one epic case widely held to be a success story of bi-partisan compromise, the Earned Income Tax Credit, is trickier than it seems. Yes, the EITC does transfer a lot of money to the working poor. But by disguising an income transfer as a tax credit, the provision adds fuel to the ideology that the best thing government can do for you is cut your taxes.
Under Bush II, progressives managed to save Social Security from privatization not by seeking compromise, but by standing their ground. The array of progressive bills enacted in the last hundred hours of the late, Democratic 111th Congress became law not because Democrats scuttled to the center, but because they hung tough and remembered what they stood for.
In Sunday's New York Times, there is a full page, characteristically fatuous ad by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with the coy headline, "There is no 'D' or 'R' in 'Solutions.'" Get it? Partisanship just stands in the way of technical solutions that should be obvious to all people of good will. It just happens that the Peterson Foundation's "apolitical" solutions are deeply conservative, whether on cutting Social Security and Medicare, or tying government's hands when it comes to recovery spending.
In case you missed it, there is a fierce debate going on. One side, which now controls the House and effectively can block legislation in the Senate, disparages science, wants America to be close to a theocracy, craves a return to Wild West gun-slinging, would gut social insurance, and repeal most of the affirmative gains of social investment and public-interest regulation since the New Deal.
The other side recognizes the value of public spending in a deep recession and beyond, wants a progressive tax code, defends Social Security, Medicare and the new health reform, wants the financial economy to be servant of the real economy, supports regulation that benefits workers and consumers, and accepts evidence-based science when it comes to climate change and other issues.
Unfortunately, this other side describes only about half the Democratic Party
Give the Republicans this: they know what they stand for. A good chunk of the Democratic Party today doesn't quite.
But where exactly is the middle ground, except in pundit-pleasing gestures like lions sitting together with lambs? How do you compromise with True Believers?
Based on early reports, the President's State of the Union Address will be better than some progressives feared. They can take some credit for warning him off Social Security cuts. And good for Obama for calling for more public investment and letting Republicans jeer, revealing the emptiness of the Republican recovery program.
When he finishes, Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, will give the Republican response. Let's hope we don't feel that someone should get equal time to give a Democratic response.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.
George Lakoff: The "New Centrism" and Its Discontents
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
This is important to acknowledge if progressives want conservatives to hear their ideas and give them serious consideration. John Barth (1930-) said something profound (in the 60s, I believe): "Every man is necessarily the hero in his own life story". One might paraphrase that by saying "Everyone believes that he or she is moral, for the most part at least, and believes that his or her own moral beliefs are the correct ones."
When you challenge that, calling your opponent immoral for his or her beliefs, he or she will react angrily, believing that YOU are the immoral one and will not listen to what you have to say.
That doesn't mean that you have to agree with his or her own positions but it does mean that you should give that person the benefit of the doubt, believing that person is moral.
Competition in a world of workers facilitated by unregulated capitalism in America has been harshly introduced to you and the people who live on your block.
When true-believers talk about cutting taxes and spending, they're thinking about the top 3% they really serve. The game can only keep going as long as they keep people stupid. Their rhetoric is morally bankrupt.
Obama, if he's trying to make a change (and I really do hope he is and wonder these days), must introduce some reality, some discussion about the moral implications re: the way that moving to this make-believe center will be harmful for our children and their children because they will be scaling back to a place we won't even recognize as democratic or holding any promise for the individual.
Rather, perhaps a better descriptor is the "few versus the many", that is the ordinary working and producing folks versus the monied class. if you look at the decisions involving value, there is the continuous vying for favor the interests of monopoly and greed versus the interests of opportunity and productivity of ordinary citizens. Presently, the monied interests control the common interests. The banks and conglomerates are destroying our democracy.
I recognize the simplicity of "them vs. us" model. It ignores the social issues which are rooted in religious and other traditional dogmas vs. science and modernity. The mythical left-center-right continuum mixes such issues with the economic issues and deceives tens of millions of innocent, powerless Americans being herded into the camp of economic slavery of financial, monied interests.
The traditional political continuum is a tool of economic power and unscrupulous politicians to confuse and confound political debate. Ordinary critics should quit using a political tool that deceives and confounds more than sharing light and the heart of darkness.
All the way to the right, probably. I think GOP Governor Robert Bentley said it most honestly last week: "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother,"
Replace "Jesus Christ" with "Biblically-Inspired Strict-Constructionist Capitalism" and you're there. Once we're ALL far-right, there'll be TONS of room for compromise.
Obama isn't a progressive. He is a blue dog Democrat. He caved on the Public Option healthcare and gave tax cuts to the wealthy for 2 more years and he threw the progressives under the bus doing it. We progressives are not his base. Repeating a fallacy over and over doesn't make it the truth. The only time he has ever been seen remotely mad and it was at the progressives. l'll vote for the man if I must but I won't be blogging, emailing, and making phone calls for him again. He obviously has contempt for progressives and I think he's really wrong. Social Security does Not add to the deficit because it's paid for by taxes. The tax cuts for the rich Does add to the deficit.
The Republicans refused to sign the bill to fund unemployment without the tax cuts for their base - the rich. It was extortion. The rich corporatism aren't making jobs or else were wouldn't have so high unemployment. They've had the tax cuts for years now and look how well that turned out - not. Bush created 10.6 Trillion dollars in deficit. Please Google Starve the Beast. Read a few things. It's a mistake to only get one source. The Republicans want to defund the social programs and I don't trust Obama anymore.
politics to the right for three decades now. And with a few instructive
exceptions, Democrats who respond by calling for a new centrism are just
acting as the right's enablers."
Watching this unbelievable farce play itself out must be extremely
frustrating to those like the pin-point accurate observer, Robert Kutner
in his latest blog, "Fatal Triangles."
He says " there is a fierce debate going on. One side, which
now controls the House and effectively can block legislation in the
Senate, disparages science, wants America to be close to a theocracy,
craves a return to Wild West gun-slinging, would gut social insurance, and
repeal most of the affirmative gains of social investment and
public-interest regulation since the New Deal."
"The other side recognizes the value of public spending in a deep
recession and beyond, wants a progressive tax code, defends Social
Security, Medicare and the new health reform, wants the financial economy
to be servant of the real economy, supports regulation that benefits
workers and consumers, and accepts evidence-based science when it comes to
climate change and other issues."
It's unseemly for the West to continue accepting this comic book penny dreadful
horror story as reality.
The choice is between believing the lies of the market fundamentalists and
uniting to repair all the ecosystems so severely affected by the gross
fallacy of making the "free market" the only reality.
“Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit”.
The beast is starving, as planned. Those spending cuts Krugman refers to are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid! Starve the elderly and disabled? Social Security helped people out of the great depression.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10054/1037783-109.stm#ixzz18wSVMOya
On a more political note, we conservatives would rather stop the outrageous spending of the government some other way. But we are blocked by the Dems. Worsening the government's financial position seems the only way to make liberals choose between their myriad constituent groups.
If left to the Democrats, Republicans would be paying 300% taxes so government bureaucrats could retire to their yachts at 25. There simply isn't enough money in the world to allow liberals free reign.
The government took in just 15% of GDP last year, and that includes corporate, personal, excise, gift, estate and payroll taxes. Conservatives in both parties have blocked any attempt to make taxes fairer and more progressive. And, contrary to the right's faux narrative, Republican administrations have increased spending at faster rates than Dem administrations.
Cutting taxes causes more spending, not less. Why? Because it's a lot easier to go to war and add new entitlements when it's all put on a credit card. No one not directly involved in those wars feels the pain. Their wallets aren't tapped for those wars. Their wallets aren't tapped for Medicare Part D, etc. Their wallets aren't tapped for trillions for corporate welfare.
"Starve the beast" has always been a sham. Spending rises faster after tax cuts, for the reasons listed above. It's time to pay as you go. It's time to stop the wars, stop corporate welfare, and invest in this nation instead.
We could learn a thing or two from China and their investment strategy.
Over the next two years we will send eight jobs over seas for every one created here, give banks billions more to invest in China and look you in the eye to say we are working on the problem.
Do not listen to that dangerous American Party rant, they say the can. Well! We say we are looking into it and appointing new commissions, what more do you want!
Vote The American Party for change!
Take some time and examine who's on the board of directors of various big businesses. Banks, Stock brokerages, even News Corp (Fox News' parent) are run by liberals.
So please don't blame Republicans when you "compromise" with your base.
Today his politics seem to follow his money stream. This fact illustrates my point.
We Republicans are drifting away from our roots as a thinking party and becoming a brainless party of feelings. Thank you Glen Beck.
This leaves us without any way to fight back against mob rule.
The people who are part of this right wing and applaud their successess so smugly are confounding to me - I don't understand how wanting the majority to have so little so that the minority can have so much is beyond my scope of understanding.
Would that other Dems joined the fight to make sure our own elected politicians began anew to fight for the principles so long embraced by the Democratic party, and quit wasting both time and energy trying to silence those who of us who dare to point out the party has been co-opted by the enemy...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-fraad-wolff/squeezed_b_812611.html
I've seen the post.
So...
Vigorous Republican opposition gives Obama all the cover he needs to push his corporatist policies.
Right on the first count, wrong on the second.
They've always known what they stand for but have been cowardly in presenting this stand. If they REALLY told their base just what they have in mind for the future of this country and the poor and middle class, they'd be met at the steps of the Capital with tar, feathers, pitchforks and hangman's nooses.
As far as the Democrats are concerned, all of them know exactly what they stand for, only the Blue Dog have a Republican definition. What keeps the Dems from sticking to their guns is pure, unadulterated cowardice.
For more on this phenomenon, checkout http://bushleaguepoliticos.webplus.net. There, you'll get the lowdown on what is going on behind the scenes by both parties.
"It" is a system where rule of law is replaced by "doing what's right" as defined by "the right sort of people". "It" gives a lord the ability to demand personal favors in exchange for not turning the mob loose on a person.
"It" is the same system that's been tried time and again throughout history, from Lucius Tarquinius to Darfur. It never works -- at least not for the common man. But it is good if you are "the right sort of person".