President Obama

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Rest in . . . Wait a Minute!

Republicans proved they are the Party of No Class (PNC) when they leaped from the death of one of their honored Supreme Court Justices to insisting that President Obama had no standing to nominate a new justice. Apparently the Constitutional duty to nominate Supreme Court justices does not extend to a Democratic president. Justice Antonin Scalia might well stir at such disrespect, both for him and the Constitution.

Governor John Kasich, notable for his good sense, spoke in last night’s debate about the haste the candidates had taken to move from honoring the passing of a conservative colleague to demanding his replacement await a new administration. Really, is 24 hours too long to remember a justice who graced the Supreme Court for a quarter of a century?

Perhaps it should be expected that a Party that spawned Donald Trump should be jockeying for political position before their comrade had some moments of peace and recognition, but it is disappointing nonetheless. A Supreme Court justice, regardless of his political bent, ought to receive the honor due his service, and Antonin Scalia was a pronounced and outspoken figure in the judiciary. He deserved better.

The high road in politics is increasingly the Road Not Taken

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Rivals, But No Team

The New York Times this week documented the President’s alienation from his party and lack of personal connections with Congress.  Doing what she does so well, Maureen Dowd piled on today with a sweeping indictment of his term in office:

First the President couldn’t work with Republicans because they were too obdurate. Then he tried to chase down reporters with subpoenas. Now he finds member of his own party an unnecessary distraction.

Thus disillusionment with Barack Obama has  spread like the flu in January. Eventually the press tires of berating Congress and PAC’s and the Supreme Court, and so the narrative must turn to the President. It is disappointing to see those who cheered him into office to whimper their buyer’s remorse, but as Harry Truman famously said, “The buck stops here.”

President Obama’s problem is that he is not Abraham Lincoln and he does not preside in an era of bi-partisanship like Lyndon Johnson. The envisioned “team of rivals” has become the Capitol Circus. And that should not be blamed on the current President.

Abraham Lincoln might have made a team of the radicals on both sides of the aisle, but few others could summon consensus from the raging Congressional zoo.  Lincoln always had a good story to thrust his foes into line and knew when to use his clout, but he was a gift to a fractious nation that might have crumbled without him.  Name another President who would have handled the dismantling of the Union with such grace. Probably not President Obama.

Lyndon Johnson has been recently vaunted for his accomplishments forging the Great Society. He was a politician’s politician, but he presided over Democratic majorities and a Congress with a will toward consensus. Johnson’s personal charm would be despised by Congressional leaders today. His accomplishments of weaving the social safety net are blamed for our mounting deficit, his name breathed with curses from Tea Party leaders. No charm or power would make these beasts leap through hoops.

The dream of healing a divided nation has dissipated, but it is not the President’s fault. True, he has not lived up Lincoln’s “team of rivals” that would struggle over differences and emerge with policy, but that was another time, another gifted leader. Today’s partisanship and media illumination would test the likes of Lincoln.

President Obama has stumbled into a decade of utter vindictiveness, where every act or proposal receives the harsh scrutiny of bitter opponents, where his most amazing accomplishment–universal health care– has been cast as a conspiracy against the middle class, where his withdrawal of American forces from most vulnerable and unwelcome intervention as a sign of weakness, and where his overtures to Congressional leaders have been reflexively spurned as “not enough.”  Not so much a “team of rivals” as a forty-ring circus with each performer posing to the voters, hoping not to get booed out of the ring.

We could wish for a President who could rescue us from this fiasco, but we should not blame one who has struggled in vain to transform it.  We elected these posers; we need to take responsibility for them.

It’s too bad most of the elections this fall are not considered “contested.” They should all be.

 

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Money Overtaken by Surprise

The most gratifying result of the 2012 election has been the defeat of big money at every level. Billionaires could not buy a President in the national election or defeat an international bridge in Michigan. Our faith in the democratic voice has been vindicated.

But more intriguing is the possibility that uncontrollable conditions might have elected our current President, events that no one could have bought or predicted.  We have no way to measure the impact of three men or a hurricane, but their effects are impossible to ignore.

The first surprise was John Roberts who blind-sided the country with his vote to let the Affordable Health Care Act stand. If anyone was betting on the Supreme Court decision, they probably lost a lot of money.  Not only did he vindicate the President’s primary first-term accomplishment, but he changed public sentiment about the law. Polls immediately started to support the law after a year of decline.  Potential voters increasingly said they supported “Obamacare” and President Obama himself decided to own the mocking expression “Obamacare,” defusing much of the criticism from the right.

Two Senatorial candidates managed to alienate most of the female voting public with ill-advised pronouncements about rape and abortion in the late summer.  Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin gave more support to pro-choice candidates than millions of dollars in campaign ads could have yielded.  The public remarks were so outrageous and unanticipated that political operatives on both sides of the issue were shocked into nearly identical denunciations of the Republican candidates’ insensitivity.  Most stunning was the fact that Akins’ public humiliation did not deter Richard Mourdock from duplicating the outrage.  The voters might have forgotten one silly blunder, but the coupled insults to women sent an indelible message.

And, of course the real October surprise was from Hurricane Sandy, which took aim on the most populated area of the country and showed how ill-prepared we were for an ocean surge, even when we were forewarned and forearmed. President Obama and Governor Christie suddenly became partners in the rescue of victims of coastal flooding, and even the opposition candidate had to grudgingly admit that FEMA had performed with swiftness and grace.

The mere presence of FEMA on the northeast coast suddenly highlighted the role the federal government had to play in preserving its citizens. All the bad air about the inefficiency and cost of federal programs suddenly dissipated as citizens could see their tax dollars put to indispensable use.

None of these factors should underestimate the amazing efficiency of the campaign’s get-out- the-vote army.  Republicans and Democrats alike will learn about mobilizing voters from the surprising results on November 6.

But the moguls who thought they could buy this election should reflect on what uncontrollable events can do to change the outcome. Three men and a natural disaster trumped billions in p0litical advertising and deceitful messaging.  You can’t buy what you can’t predict, and a democracy thrives on the unpredictable.