Sweet Resignation

In a weird sort of way, I sympathize with Rep. John Boehner. Like a right-wing Icarus, Boehner saw opportunity in the Tea Party takeover of Congress following the 2010 midterm elections. Ultimately, he didn't realize that the position of Speaker of the House requires more pragmatism than his far-right allies anticipated. The group of congressman that he caucused with were accused (somewhat unfairly) of caving to President Obama and house Democrats, especially during the disastrous government shutdown two years ago. John Boehner was the adult in a room of children, the one level-headed voice in a clown car of crazies. He was loathed by Democrats for pushing a rigid agenda, and disdained by some Republicans for being too wishy-washy. In the end, you almost can't blame him for resigning.

My primary concern, however is whether the remedy will be worse than the malady. The assumed short list of possible candidates to succeed Boehner is a mix of establishment and Tea Party Republicans, and overall not that inspiring. Whether or not this person serves beyond the next 15 months isn't dependent upon the Democrats making any gains in the 2016 election (a long shot at this point) but the various fissures within the GOP. This person will have the Sisyphean task of forming a united front for two large and disparate factions of the party, one louder than the other, an area where Rep. Boehner tried many times and ultimately failed. In short, the GOP parents are going out to dinner, and they need a new babysitter.

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Dancing on the Ceiling

I’m not one for jingoistic bluster, but… America, we dodged a bullet.

Not many people will be satisfied in the long run with Sunday’s compromise. The right end of the political spectrum is likely underwhelmed by the $2.4 trillion cut, the left side sitting shiva for such a major loss. The finer details of the cut are still dripping out, but for spectators like me it’ll be like how cows become beef: it delicious until you find out how it’s made. The president was faced with the highly unsavory option of having to raise taxes —confirming the worst fears of his conservative critics— but when that bullet point was grudgingly wiped off the table as reluctantly as it was initially suggested, the wheels were turning again. To be fair, this now-hypothetical taxation would’ve risen back to Clinton-era levels, a modest spike for some but a massive point of resistance for Tea Party Republicans.

I don’t want to kick Speaker John Boehner while he’s down, but in hindsight his proposal to raise the debt ceiling might’ve been too partisan. Boehner’s inability to muster enough GOP votes in Congress late last week not only inadvertently broke the budget gridlock, but gave President Obama the slightest morsel of a victory in a moment when he badly needed it. After that, the ball was in the president’s court; the new GOP strategy would’ve been too far-right to gain traction, and house Democrats had to woo that rarest and most endangered of species, moderate Republicans. Alas, I can’t call Obama the true winner, either; the plan that coasted through the House and Senate and signed by the president earlier today had to be approved no matter the flaws, or otherwise we’d suffer the consequences. This was a small triumph for the middle of the road; only the far right and extreme left opted not to follow the leader.

Alas, one crucial compromise will not inspire a renewal of faith in our government . Congress had to break up the loggerheads somehow or face dire consequences. One would argue that the budget crisis of 1979 provided some inspiration, but the true comparison point is Greece. The Mediterranean nation and cradle of Democracy hasn’t been a European power for centuries, and their defaulting was part of a sad slippery slope. As Faheed Zaharia pointed out in Time magazine back in July, the US has too many economic advantages —including controlling our own currency and a comparatively healthy trade system— to fail the same way Greece did. The Greek government deserved to fail, but the US government and its international investors alike had too much on the line. The domino effect would’ve been mythological, so to speak.

To reiterate my point: today America dodged a bullet.

Other notes:

+ Fantasy Update: both teams are still hovering around .500. Even though I’ve been bitten by the injury bug on repeat occasions —Brian McCann was my latest victim— so has everyone else, so I can’t really use that as an excuse.

+ Random question of the day: do the people that carry “Impeach Obama” signs on the edge of the highway realize that would make Joe Biden commander-in-chief? You’d think they would plan this type of thing out…

+ Finally, in early July a man in North Carolina recovered the class ring he lost 51 years ago when the girlfriend he gave it to accidentally flushed it down the toilet. No word yet on whether she said “yes” for prom.

House of Cards

Some thoughts on the "new" 112th U.S. Congress:

Last month, The New Yorker ran a fascinating profile about incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner. It was a surprisingly impartial, intermittently flattering portrayal of the Ohio congressman, though one point in the article resonated with me. His rise to power in the last two or three years, a steady climb that began in the early '90s and was almost derailed when he answered a lobbyist's siren song, has been a remarkable story of political strategy not only on his part but his allies and opponents as well. Boehner positoned himself as a Tea Party sympathizer when he agreed with maybe 50% of their platform, and his prominence in the house made him a willing target of sorts for both Democratic bigwigs and left-leaning pundits. The icing on the cake came just before the election, when President Obama himself called Boehner out during a speech, a moment that evoked the one-on-one, partisan deus ex machina between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich 15-plus years ago. The parallels are quite striking, though you can draw the similarities on your own.

Now that we're halfway through President Obama's first term in office --yes, I'm looking at the glass as half full-- I confess that I don't regret voting for him in 2008. Rest assured, this is not liberal bluster. If I had to choose between the candidate that responded immediately when the economy collapsed against a candidate that temporarily suspended his campaign to figure out what he was going to do, I'd go with the guy that already had a plan. I'm not saying that the Obama economic agenda is perfect, but at least his team had a strategy in place. It's not that the government shouldn't be spending our tax dollars on rebuilding America's physical, sociopolitical, and economic infrastructure so much as it's the little frivolities that grinds my gears. A government cannot function without some type of financial redistribution; it's just a matter of how that money is spent.

As I alluded to in my midterm election blog two months ago, the GOP's takeover of the House of Representatives has short-term consequences, but what happens in 2012 is still anyone's guess. The Democratic blowout of the 1982 midterms was a response to President Reagan's wobbly first two years in office, but he won reelection two years later in a landslide. The "Republican Revolution" of 1994 was a rebuke of President Clinton and his failed attempt at health care reform, but he was elected to a second term in 1996 by a clear margin. Then again, the GOP gobbled up the house in the 1978 midterms when President Carter's economic and foreign policies were non-starters, and look what happened there. The number of X-factors that will pop up between now and November 2012 are infinite and endless at this point.

I know I've railed against the GOP establishment many times over the years, and I'm still hesitant to give credit to the Tea Party candidates, but all this fresh blood will help our government in the short term. The passings of Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, and (indirectly) Ted Stevens in the past 18 months gave way to young, unproven but determined voices in our nation's highest legislature, fresh points of view that were badly needed. The question is, will these conservative young guns provide new ideas, or merely serve as resistance and vocal dissention to President Obama? Will the two or three new Democrats go in lockstep with the President, or find their own voice? Will they push or shove?

Politics as Usual

It normally doesn't generate much media attention, but this year's Conservative Political Action Conference might've been the most bombastic ever. Usually this annual powwow is a mostly wonky, drab affair, but this year the tighty righties pulled out the knives. It wasn't terribly surprising that a fair part of the CPAC was spent criticizing Former President Bush; as much as he adored the conservative movement, Bush had such a poor handle on these ideals that his own party gave him the cold shoulder. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich dared to compare President Obama to Bush by comparing their "failed" economic policies and propencity for humongous bailouts. Gov. Mitt Romney took another stab at Bush, wishing that our 43rd president had laid out a stimulus package before he left office, while Gov. Mike Huckabee cited the need for competant conservative leadership that Dubya only intermittently offered.

The 800-pound gorilla in the room wasn't the past or present but the future of the GOP. With the Democrats controlling the presidency, both houses of congress, and possibly the Supreme Court in a year or two, the Republicans are feeling increasingly marginalized. Some might argue that the conservative movement is digging its own grave, that an inherent lack of focus resulted in crushing losses in the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential race. Non-conservatives will suggest that it's the media representation of the right wing --not the politicians themselves-- that's bringing them down. After Rush Limbaugh declared that he hopes Obama fails, did anyone really expect him to tone his bluster down? Were we really expecting any new insight from Ann Coulter, outside of her usual cartoonish liberal-bashing? Are there any conservative pundits that can keep their egos seperated from their opinions?

There's still reason for optimism, though. This year's CPAC was attended by a record 9,000 Republican gearheads, most of whom were college kids and politically active twenty-somethings. It's not too often that you see youngsters looking wide-eyed with their mouths agape at the likes of John Boehner and Ron Paul. This is the future of the Republican Party, tomorrow's campaigners and speechwriters and somewhere down the road candidates in their own right. The near-future isn't quite as rosy; Gov. Bobby Jindal's response of the Obama's state of the union address was criticized by both sides as too feeble and homespun, and some moderate Republicans still aren't warming up Gov. Sarah Palin, but they're still viable sparing partners for President Obama in 2012.

Finally... I really don't know what to make of the Roland Burris situation, probably because I'm still burnt out from the Blagojevich impeachment. I can't tell if it makes sense to kick Burris out of office at this point; after all, he's only finishing out President Obama's term and it's unlikely that Burris will get reelected to a full term on his own merit. I don't doubt that Burris deceived the state of Illinois, it's just a question of how much he's hiding. On the other hand, Burris is not Blagojevich; our former governor was an arrogant buffoon and got what he deserved, whereas Burris is a longtime Illinois politico that keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.