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The New Era of Hostage Politics
When I arrived in Washington this past Sunday, just as the debt ceiling crisis was approaching its climax, all the flags surrounding the capital's Union Station stood at half-mast. I blackly joked with my brother and sister-in-law that maybe they'd been lowered to mark the death of the New Deal. (In fact, they honored the recent passing of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Shalikashvili.)![](/sites/commondreams.org/files/resize/imce-images/hostage-taking-and-negotiating--101--debt-ceiling-and-budget-edition-325x211.jpg "Democracy held hostage. And, writes Winship, "The only way to defeat truculent bullies and extremist ideologues is to fight back, stand up, say no.")
Democracy held hostage. And, writes Winship, "The only way to defeat truculent bullies and extremist ideologues is to fight back, stand up, say no.
As for those throngs of sightseers, defying the malarial heat and clogging the DC streets and sidewalks? I imagined them engaged in that phenomenon known as "last chance tourism" -- getting to a location before it disappears, like the melting glaciers of the Rockies.
But my bleakest fantasies aside, Washington and America still stand, although the shining city on a hill Ronald Reagan liked to extol has been graffitied with the intemperate sloganeering and mudslings of Tea Partiers and others of the right who believe the best government is none at all, and selfishly would have those in need huddle, jobless and hungry, in the dark. (What's the old joke: how many laissez-faire economists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None -- the market will take care of it.)
Like so many progressives, I tried, really tried to find a silver lining in the deal that finally was brokered, much as one occasionally hears news reports on the "upside" of global warming. (Wider shipping lanes in the Arctic -- hooray!) Programs for the poor seem to be protected, for now. Medicare cuts allegedly don't affect beneficiary payments. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy still expire in 2013! (I'll believe it when I see it.)
All cold solace at best. Because it's impossible not to shake the idea that in their unthinking zeal to slash spending, carve down the deficit, and destroy the opposition, Republicans are like the guy drilling holes in the hull of his foundering lifeboat to let the water out -- despite the objections and pleas of the other passengers.
Which reflects a larger problem. As Jonathan Bernstein wrote in Monday's Washington Post, "...The GOP's incentives are skewed. Rather than caring about policy, they appear to care more about symbolism, such as a Balanced Budget Amendment, than about actual policy. Rather than caring about cutting the best deal they can get, they appear to care more about proving their loyalty to the cause (they refused to deal on health care even though so doing might have gotten them more of what they wanted)...
"This requires them to oppose Democratic presidents regardless of what it means in substantive gains or losses. The result is that Republicans wind up following the lead of hucksters and talk show hosts, even when it leads them to strange places. And that, not anything inherent in Congress even in polarized times, winds up yielding a dysfunctional legislative process."
Like it or not, arcane and abused as some of its procedures are, corrupted by money and influence, complicated beyond reason and in gross need of reform, what's left of our system only works if there are rules of procedure and behavior. Sometimes those rules are unwritten, more tradition than codified in law, mutually accepted by all concerned. Lose that, as we now have, and everything else goes straight to hell.
The don't-give-a-damn, slash-and-burn, hostage taking methods used by Republican leadership in the debt fight are distressingly undemocratic and seriously undermine the remnants of this fragile, representative republic. Worth it, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the other day. In fact, he could imagine a repeat performance.
And so they will keep doing it again and again because, as we've just seen, it works. President Obama and many of his fellow Democrats have let them get away with it and even acted as accessories to the crime, caving in and buying into the notion that at a time when further government stimulus is crucial for jobs and growth, the main thing to do is to cut spending. It wouldn't surprise me if future legislation from the GOP came in the form of ransom notes, words and letters torn from newspapers and magazines and pasted on the page, more threat than law.
In the immediate wake of the debt ceiling war, the impasse over the Federal Aviation Administration -- now temporarily broken in the face of public opinion, nearly 75,000 put out of work and potentially hundreds of millions in lost tax revenue -- is ample evidence of Republican intent. When Democrats pushed back against an attempt to overthrow a National Mediation Board ruling making it easier for airline (and railroad) workers to unionize, the House refused to reauthorize FAA funding, normally a routine decision, then offered a puny, one-month extension but furthered the blackmail by threatening to shut off subsidies for rural air service in the home states of key Democratic Senators Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller (chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee) and Max Baucus (chairman of the Senate Finance Committee).
New York Senator Chuck Schumer said, "Airports are the economic engines of the small communities around the country, and that economic engine is now stuck in neutral... [Republicans] have taken brinkmanship again one step too far." Even Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said the move was "not honorable," but when Rockefeller cried foul, the man who added the rural airport provision, Republican Congressman John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, disingenuously claimed: "It's just a tool to try to motivate some action to get this resolved."
In other words, our way or no highway in the sky. One reader of the website Talking Points Memo wrote, "They don't care about the will of the people, they don't care if government works (because they have convinced themselves that it's inherently bad) and they would rather have the country go down the tubes than not get what they want."
With appropriations legislation due for debate after the summer recess ends, there's much, much more of this kind of tactic to come. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she has a secret plan to defeat future hostage taking but "if I were to tell you... it would be defanged."
Unfortunately, when a secret plan is announced in public in advance of execution not only is it no longer secret, it usually turns out there wasn't much of a plan in the first place. We'll see.
One thing I do know: the only way to defeat truculent bullies and extremist ideologues is to fight back, stand up, say no. And much as it may go against your accommodating soul, Mr. President, that means you, too. Please step up to the plate.
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18 Comments so far
Show All"And much as it may go against your accommodating soul, Mr. President, that means you, too. Please step up to the plate."
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Those darn nihilistic Republicans! Why, they're like Samson in a suicidal rage, determined to go for broke even if it means that the entire shining temple will crash down upon all of us!
Praise the Lord! Here comes Obama and the Democratic leadership in the nick of time with a nice, sharp pair of scissors!
Oh, wait-- those are curling irons. And what looks like a big can of mousse! What's THAT all about, I wonder?
Any "fighting back" will not be done by the president. He is there to follow the orders of, in the words of the late Molly Ivins, "them what brung him." He was never the least bit progressive or liberal, just someone who could convincingly talk a good game. One can almost hear the movers and shakers of the Powers That Be: "He's black but he'll do as he's told but will make those who yearn for some kind of change believe he's on their side!" He is strictly a front man, obeying orders. His language skills are sufficiently well developed that he is able to spew out self-justifying spin. Those waiting for him to take up the banner of "change you can believe in" and really run with it will, I'm afraid, continue to be disappointed.
Is it time for GOP Kool-Aid yet?
Dump Obama in 2012. If we can elect progressive congress people, it won't matter whether the greater or lesser evil sits in the White House.
I second that
Maybe if we hold O's feet to the fire..., by golly...
Nastygrams work better...especially when accompanied by a serious brow beating!
I was thinking that if we held his feet to the fire, he would step up to the plate...er...
OK, OK, Obama isn't really a radical. He never said he was. He's a Democrat, in the mold of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, i.e., conservative. Can we now stipulate that factual finding and get on with discussing how to build progressive politics in America?
I have no problem with using the mechanisms of the antiquated, dysfunctional US Constitution to bring about progressive change, and the hell with "civility", "reaching across the aisle", and other similar bromides peddled by well heeled pundits.
I would have no problem with Obama vetoing the "deal" over the Bush tax cuts, or using the 14th Amendment to bypass Congress on the debt ceiling. I would have no problem with an Executive Order switching funds from the Security Apparatus to mass hiring of unemployed people to help rebuild infrastructure. I don't care if the Republicans impeach Obama for moving effectively to create jobs right now.
The only problem I see with "hostage taking" is that only the Republicans have the guts to do it. The Democrats control the Senate and the White House -- let them take some damn hostages for a change.
We know that won't happen, because there is no active popular movement out there that demands that they do this. Instead, "polls show" that Americans "disagree" with just about everything the Republicans do. The Republicans don't give a damn about passive "disagreement", most often expressed by refusal to participate in politics. They are happy to run the political system and let the "disagreers" mutter about how "uncivil" they are.
And least of all are Republicans worried about the remote possibility that those who are disappointed with Obama for being too conservative might move to actively oppose him. That would guarantee them victory in 2012.
The problem with American politics is not Obama's conservatism, or the Republicans' incivility. It is the absence of a mass movement for progressive change. I hope American progressives will focus on building that, and forget about Obama and his crew of "centrist" losers.
We had to give him the loaded gun. If we hadn't he would have stabbed us.
Obama played the Tea Party game because “They(Obama and his advisers) decided they could use a debt crisis created by Republicans to push through cuts to Social Security and Medicare in a manner that would provide the President with plausible deniability. In other words, Obama could claim “They made me do it!” while achieving what his Wall Street backers want – maintaining Global Capital’s police force on the backs of working folks, the middle class and the poor.” Felice Pace http://www.counterpunch.org/pace08042011.html
We are seeing an implementation of Disaster Capitalism in the USA. The goal is the privatization of everything public. It will destroy social safety-nets and the welfare of the people at large will be returned to the pre social security era while the ruling class will amass enormous profit.
Pleading Obama to do something on the behalf of the unwashed mass is over.
We are still right back to, may they rot in hell lies of the republicans kissing the asses of the top two percent, big corporations and hedge fund people that have thanks to the Roberts court no election money regulations, they have bought and paid for America and want you for a slave. The tea party are domestic terrorists holding our life's savings over our heads, we paid into Social Security and Medicare all our lives but they want it, and are telling us to our face, they will take it! All our democrats can do is stand by and kiss the same asses to save their jobs, the Koch brothers, and mudock mafia bought America. Fox news lies, hey republicans, where are the jobs?
I'm an admirer of Bill Moyers but this Winship piece undoes itself at the end when he asks Obama to "step up to the plate." Obama publicly stated in unequivocal terms that he was "willing to put his presidency on the line" to "achieve" a debt ceiling deal that preemptive offered concessionary cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other social welfare spending during the worst and most prolonged economic decline since the Great Depression. End of story on neo-lib/neo-con Obama as far as any true progressive should be concerned.
To CD eds: Please try to include more articles with left-of-DLC Democrat ideas for authentic progressive or socialist or "third way" change and less articles from DLC apologists pleading with Obama to act more progressive or socially compassionate or portraying him as having been "out-negotiated" by Republicans and Tea Partiers when he is as neo-liberal and neo-conservative as many if not most of them.
A big pool of drivel.
This stupid Republicans bad/Democrats good elixir of salivated rabid putrescence is something I try to avoid stepping in.
Mr Winship seems to believe it is a sign of intelligence to try to promote it.
To say Obama has an "accommodating soul" is the same as saying that Shylock was spiritually advanced.
Keep enabling your "bleakest fantasies" by not seeing reality.
YAWN. Bird says this guy's article is a "pool of drivel." Bingo.
The author's credentials: "President of the Writers Guild of America, East"
What that means when he writes: Play it safe, offend no one. (Is that why you became a writer? Hell no.)
Take a friggin stand Mike. So far this president has been the 3rd term of Dubya.
Can't you see this? No new taxes on the rich while he took from the poor to reduce the budget deficit... OMG! Or how about nearing 1,000,000 dead Iraqis with zero gain in "real" reality. We're still there bigtime, just lots of "contractor" replacements. And Afghanistan is his baby. It was his choice to expand that one. PLEASE read the MIT report: http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/
Obama brought all this on himself by being a conflict averse jelly fish that rolls over at the slightest shove from the bullying Repugs.
The pathetic part is that the Dems roll with him! Bad strategy. They should oppose him and help defeat him in 2012. No Republican will do as much damage as a second Obama term to the Dem. base as the coward in chief.
Right now Shrub Bush is saying: Wow! I tried to destroy the New Deal but obama is doing it for me! I should have voted for him!
Lots of Luck. How can you tell people who are on the take to Stand up for you? Get real this country is finished. We cant fight back. So many of us that have a job, weather is minimal income or alot are not going to risk it. Younger people who have always depended on Mom and Dad for everything, dont want to risk it or there Parents job. With that, no one will fight. So how do you expect members of Congress too. Face it we are finished. We need to acknowledge it!!
P.S. Once people realize that. Them maybe something will happen