The Shellacking of the President

2010_11-03 The Shellacking of the President
Dear Pete,
Well, there’s one more idealistic, naïve, and silver-tongued president, if not exactly down the drain, with his back up against the wall. To me Obama is looking like a faux liberal, a politician in way over his head, another flash in the pan who was eaten up by an adoring crowd that was seduced by his stirring rhetoric of his campaign for the Oval Office. The first black president was another incentive to put him there, just as removing him from office was an incentive to the founding of the Tea Party movement, which from the beginning revealed a racist element. I have a hard time imagining him pulling out of the nose dive he is currently in, and he won’t be nestling with progressive in the next two years—far from it! Odds on he’ll do what Bill Clinton did, move to a center-right place in the political spectrum in order “to get along,” to be effective even in a minimal way. I would not look for him to get his hackles up—to be confrontational, like FDR was with the power of the wealthy in American politics. Obama, I regret to say, doesn’t seem to have the inner grit for that, as he is too identified with Establishment America. He wants to “get along,” above all else. He wants to be liked, to “do the right thing,” to compromise with the other side who have made it abundantly clear time and time again they see compromise as a one way street. The onus is on the president, not them, especially not after their victory last night. And yet today at his Press Conference Obama said he was sure he could work with Republicans. The man never learns and it pains me to say that.
It is fair to say this was a historic election and by that I mean it was more than the usual swing in midterm elections. The numbers in the House were the highest in 70 years. The average has been 22.6 seats change parties in off-year elections. This time it was between 60 to 65 seats, depending on a few races not resolved yet. And consider this: when they combine with the conservative Democrats in the House, well, they will be a legislative powerhouse. Won’t it be ironic if the Democrats in the Senate have to use the filibuster to, say, block repeal of the new Health Care Bill, which was on the minds of several Republicans today? Could happen. On the other hand, conservative Democratic Senators could cross over and join the Republicans, just like their brethren in the House—in order to once again “to get along” with the majority party, one that, unlike the Democrats under Obama’s leadership, can be aggressive in their use of the advantageous legislative position. That’s the big fear: That the GOP will carry through with their threat of a rollback of Obamacare and other bills and to do it with a vengeance. Europeans, who have had universal health care for decades, must think we are out of our minds, picturing our foolishness as a diapered male sitting on a jackass backward, looking behind not forward. Actually, I think the most likely scenario for the Senate will be two years of gridlock, with both sides shouting at each other for the responsibility of the do-nothing congress. I would picture that as a donkey and an elephant standing immobile on the bridge to nowhere.
Paul Krugman has been harping on the Republican eagerness to stop all government spending, which is in his view the worst possible thing they could do, for three reasons: If consumers are not spending due to fear and caution, if the private sector isn’t spending or hiring, out of caution and anxiety over the slow recovery from the recession, and, finally, if the government won’t fill the void, like the New Deal did in the Thirties, where will necessary cash flow come from? Money needs to circulate for things to happen. How can they block the flow and expect to get out of the hole we are in? Krugman has argued that the stimulus bill should have been at least double what it was. Can’t the Fed do it? Yes, and I hear they did make some kind of move today. During the next few years Krugman predicts hard times, a period of “political chaos and economic weakness.” It is hard to come to any other conclusion.
Be of good cheer (even though I know it’s difficult),
Jerry P