Tea party

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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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Rush Week

This is the nation’s biggest “Rush Week,” the week before the willing and the gullible are inducted into the voter fraternity.  It is no exaggeration to compare the wooing of the eligible voter to the seasonal Rush on college fraternities and sororities, except this Rush is not selective. It beckons every registered voter to its side of the ballot.

A word of caution about “the Rush.”  During Rush Week, fraternities have a plan to attract the most worthy by closeting the least worthy. Because, despite some of the most elitist policies in a democratic society, fraternities always seem to have a few embarrassing members, the ones they sadly disparage as the “nerds,” the “geeks,” or the “turkeys.”   Traditionally these potential embarrassments get “movie money” to abandon the house during Rush parties, so the recruits never suspect what manner of fraternity brother they will encounter if they join the fraternity. I have no idea if fraternities still stoop to this practice, but I know it is occurring right now in the Republican Presidential Campaign.

While Mitt Romney is gliding to the center of the political spectrum, his Tea Party brothers and sisters have become invisible, or at least inaudible, in the media. They are buttoning their lips while the nominee gives ground to a woman’s right to choose, the need to expand health insurance, the protection of Medicare and Medicaid, the preservation of college loans, and the peace-making role of the U.S. in the Middle East.  If the Party nominee had let these hedged positions slip during the Primary season, he would have been drummed out of the fraternity.

But the “Tea-keys” of the Republican Party have graciously stepped out the back door of the frat house during the Rush.  While their nominee has implied that he will go after tax deductions at the upper level of income, they have stopped their ears and held their tongues.  They know the rules of the Rush: let the Chairman do his job and don’t meddle with success.

In the weeks leading up to the big Rush, a couple of gobblers squawked out of turn in Indiana and Missouri. They apparently did not get the message that conservative discourse had been suspended.  Fortunately the brothers cornered them in the pantry and convinced them to revise and apologize before they drove the recruits screaming from the house with their unauthorized convictions. The Chairman also declared he would have none of their misogynist mutterings.  He didn’t kick them out, but he did give them movie tickets for a month of openings.

After the Rush, the “unmentionables” always return, and the fraternity carries on like nothing happened.  Except the once-invisible members now have the run of the house. They might even be officers in charge of things.  In actual fraternities it hardly matters, because the brothers don’t influence the cost of tuition or the distributing of scholarships.  They just plan parties, organize fund-raisers and promote camaraderie.

Not in the nation’s House.  The faithful of the Tea Party will stalk the halls of Congress, declaring their non-negotiable positions.  They will bully the freshmen and threaten the moderate upper-classmen until the Party line is solid and inviolable.   Their rules will be the House rules.

This is the fraternity that is courting the American voter this Rush week, an affable and welcoming group, whose most dogmatic and recalcitrant members are lurking in the closet, waiting for the Rush to be over.  They are confident of their clout, once their guy is in the White House, and they know nothing has been promised that they can’t circumvent.

The question for us, the prospective pledges, to answer is, Can we live with all the members of this fraternity–even the closeted ones? Are we comfortable with the likes of the Republican Primary candidates, the ones who cried ‘no amnesty’ for all undocumented residents and who denied a woman’s right to choose under any circumstances?  Are we going to join on the basis of a handshake from the smiling Chair of Rush Week?

Ever since “The Revenge of the Nerds” we have learned to respect the outliers, the ones we used to closet. They turned out to be our bosses or our formidable competition.  Likewise no one should underestimate the power of the closeted ones after the 2012 election.

 

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Dear Student Voters of Wisconsin:

The recall election in Wisconsin Tuesday is a test of an under-funded majority to resist the super-funded minority, trying to maintain its base of power in the seat of the governor, Scott Walker. Your vote is the swing vote in a closely contested election that could determine the funding of public education, the funding of student loans, the rights of workers, and  the access to voter registration.  These issues reflect a national movement, some call it the Tea Party, that wields most of its clout through the financing of billionaires, who pretend to represent the middle class.

By any poll of national opinion the Tea Party is a splinter group, controlling the national dialogue about government reform, claiming to liberate citizens from laws that protect them. More to the point, the legislators who speak for the Tea Party are hacking at the student loan and public education system that has been the path to mobility for most first-generation college students.

How many of you would not be in college at all without the availability of student loans and the modest cost of publicly-funded universities? Yes, the tuition costs at state universities have been rising alarmingly in the last decade, but you should recognize that both the state and federal sources of these funds have been depleted by the so-called budget reformers, who claim we cannot afford your education.

Instead Tea Party reformers urge you to attend for-profit universities with higher tuition and without benefit of student loans.  This is one of many ways they refuse to support the mobility of the middle class. While their rhetoric trumpets reducing the deficit, their votes are blowing up the bridges to employment and financial stability for middle class students.

Governor Scott Walker proudly identifies with the Tea Party and has implemented their agenda consistently during his tenure. He is not a friend to students dependent on public education or to the struggling middle class.  How is it possible that he has undermined so many people, while maintaining his popularity and place in the polls?

It only depends on who votes on Tuesday. If the voter-eligible students in Wisconsin turned out in strength at the polls, the reign of Governor Walker would end, and Wisconsin could rightly claim to be governed by the majority of its citizens. The power of the Koch brothers and their Tea Party allies could be defused by the most conventional means: the ballot box.

Wisconsin has become a national symbol of the backlash against the Tea Party and the monied interests that have no stake in your future.  It has risen heroically against a politician and his regressive agenda. It is an inspiration to students across the nation.

If the eligible student voters of Wisconsin vote in strength on Tuesday, the state will be a national symbol of student power at the polls.  No one should stay home, claiming that they have no influence on the political tide in their state. You have decisive influence, not only for Wisconsin, but for the entire nation. Our hearts are in your hands. Seize the ballot and vote for the recall of Governor Scott Walker.

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Reconciliation and Recalcitrance

Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer and you may be thrown into prison. (Matt 5:25)

The recent primary victory of Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock underlined the theme of “principled” leadership, a recognizable message of the Tea Party movement (New York Times, May 9, 2012).  While “principles” are sorely needed in federal politics, they are frequently a code word for recalcitrance and irresponsibility. Sometimes we refer to those who act from inflexible principles as “radicals” or “terrorists.”

I remember the 1970’s as defined by principles. You either favored peace or war, love or hate, freedom or repression. “Radical” was often used positively, as someone who wanted to change what was wrong with society. We acted on principles by marching, sitting in, or impeding traffic.  And we often had positive outcomes: the end of the Vietnam War, Civil Rights legislation, the exposure of Watergate.

But the radicals of the 1970’s were assimilated into government, institutions of social reform, even into churches.  They realized that they could change institutions from within and by negotiation, instead of by naked resistance. “Reformer” became the preferred term for “radical.”

The Tea Party represents contemporary radicalism, along with the “Occupy” movement. The difference is that the Tea Party wants to radicalize from within. They assume they can jam the cogs of government by their intractability.  They operate on pledges and vows that make their representatives pawns of their principles.  This is probably not what the Founders had in mind for a government of checks and balances. It is probably not what Jesus had in mind when he exhorted his followers to honor the principles of the law.

The fifth chapter of Matthew, the Beatitudes,  is all about reconciliation with enemies, reconciliation with spiritual brothers and sisters, reconciliation with the adversary taking you to court. The whole notion of “settling out of court,” which is advocated by Matthew 5:25, should be of particular interest to those who think our society is too litigious.

But Jesus was not merely concerned with short-circuiting the justice system, he was interested in reconciliation, bringing foes together, dissolving feuds.  And it is in this teaching that he undermines radicalism as we know it. He wants parties to be reconciled and to work together. He wants compromise and forgiveness.

I don’t like Christians who challenge my morality on the basis of partial reading of scripture, so I don’t wish to force my reading on others. But I see the Beatitudes as a central message of the Gospels, and the theme of reconciliation as the essence of Jesus’ teaching, and I think radicals ought to consider it, along with the notion of principle.  “Principle” can be suffocating and polarizing to mutual destruction.

The “judge” in Matthew 5:25 could be the Judge of all. The Gospels are suffused with stories of unforgiving masters and ruthless judges, whom God will not forgive.  Radicalism, while admirable in those who sacrifice their livelihood for their beliefs, can also destroy those who are trying to lead and mediate. A “principled”  stand can be alienating and deadly.

So judge carefully whether what you call “principle” is merely “recalcitrance” and ruthless opposition.