“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that reads something like this: “How’s that Hope and Change Working Out for You?” I may not have the wording quite right, but the sticker is obviously intended as an attack on the Obama Administration.

So I’ll answer the questions, in form two but in substance just one.

My answer is, “Not very well.” I think my friend would give the same answer, but our reasons in each case would be very different.

I regard the Obama Administration (so far, at least) as a failure for three main reasons:

1. (Most important) The Democratic Party remains badly divided and is led in both houses of Congress very poorly.
2. (Almost as important) The Republican Party has adopted a strategy of obstruction at all costs.
3. (Pretty minor compared to items 1 and 2) The President has allowed himself to consider all sides of a question too thoroughly.

It’s easy to consider Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Speaker Pelosi as the villains, but most of the Democratic committee chairs have been at best weak, and have too easily fallen prey to the same greed and duplicity that beset their Republican counterparts from the days of New Gingerich onwards. It is also probably true that the “pragmatic”, “centrist” approach that came into favor with Democrats after the election of 1980 has led to a generation of party hacks. Most Democratic leaders are so committed to the “center” (as they see it) that they do not entertain decisive or creative ideas. Worse yet, they often accept without demurrer Republican premises, such as the vague, harmful notion that all government expenditure is wasteful and unproductive.

As for the Republicans, the conduct of their leadership since the election of 2006 has been nothing less than shameful and worse. I say “worse” because their strategy has been to obstruct all proposals from the Democrats, regardless of merit, purely for the sake of being able to say that the Democrats are a “do-nothing” party of “extreme liberals”. That these two basic charges might contradict each other is irrelevant. The main aim of Republican strategy (or, if you like, “conservative” strategy) at the moment is to discredit the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are doing remarkably well at this work.

The President’s own conduct has generally been that of an insect trapped on a spider web. He struggles to get free, but the struggle only enmeshes him more tightly in the web - what web? The web of small favors, of selfish interests, of needing to cobble together a coalition. Two issues at this time call attention to his problems:

1. The decision over whether to deploy more troops to Afghanistan and (if it is to be done) how many and when.
2. The titanic struggle to pass a health-care bill.

In the first case, the President has dithered too long. It may now be impossible to deploy the troops before they are needed (if that is the decision) or to bring about a complete but orderly withdrawal (if that is needed). For complete deployment, it should take from four to six months; about the same time would be needed to plan and execute a withdrawal. Thus, whether or not the President makes a major decision at the beginning of December, getting that decision carried out by the time the spring campaigning season begins is going to be extremely difficult.

In the second matter, the health care bill, the situation is quite remarkable. The Democrats have managed to get a bill more or less past the House of Representatives. It now faces a great dilemma in the Senate - liberal Democrats (of whom there are very few, but in this case just one is enough) insist on a “government” health care option, while conservative Democrats (or, to be more precise, Joe Lieberman, supposedly an independent) refuse to vote for a bill that has such a provision. Majority Leader Reid (himself in dire trouble in his home state) is unable to get the two sides to raise their eyes enough to see that, just as the Republicans will be happy with defeat of health-care reform on any grounds, there is a need for the Democrats to pass a bill of any kind.

This last sentence contains a dire condemnation of American politics as practiced in 2009. We have ceased on both sides to consider issues and solutions on their merits, and have put partisan interest above service to the people. The blame is to be apportioned equally to the leadership of both major political parties and no small share of it should be assigned to President Obama. (To be fair, there is on the Republican side no equivalent to President Obama - and such an equivalent is certainly not Sarah Palin, whose incompetence and ignorance is so breathtaking that I get itches in unmentionable places whenever the optic arises.)

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me