After the Future

How Republicans Think (Updated)

Here's a classic case of Republican projection of its own cynical thinking--Karl Rove predicting Obama's VP pick:

"I think [Obama's] going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice," Rove said. "He's going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president."

Rove singled out Virginia governor Tim Kaine, also a Face The Nation guest, as an example of such a pick.

"With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years, he's been able but undistinguished," Rove said. "I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America."  (h/t TPM--also video there sourcing Rove's quote.)

Bush 1 picked Dan Quayle out of smug complacency; McCain seems to have picked Palin out of desperation. I'm not seeing the upside here for the GOP of this Palin choice. I know they have no problem picking unqualified ideologues to do important jobs. (Who cares if they screw up so long as those no-bid contracts keep coming?)  I know the McCain people are not politically stupid, but this is a play to the base when the battle is for the middle.  Do they think that this choice will attract enough women and angry Hillary supporters from the middle?  To me it's counterintuitive and enhances the McCain has bad judgment argument.  Anybody want to lay out the counterargument.  I haven't read anything yet I find convincing. but I'm sure there's a valid counterargument

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UPDATE: RU Insane? How about this for twisted thinking that tries to justify the pick:

I am kind of amazed that the Democrats have decided to directly attack Governor Palin’s experience. Someone should remind them who they nominated for President.

In fact, I can see the GOP cutting an ad talking about how Sarah Palin made a difference in changing Alaska, and asking Barack Obama whether he’s done as much to change Illinois. The answer might well be: no.

I realize, of course, that she’s totally unqualified to be President at this point in time. If McCain were to die in February 2009, I hope Palin would have the good sense to appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President, on the understanding that she would then resign and be appointed Vice President by her successor. (Lest anyone say that this is an absurd, unconstitutional or undemocratic scenario, recognize that this is pretty much what would happen in a Parliamentary system where, if the head of government dies, a successor is chosen by the party.) Palin is absolutely not ready to be President now, but that is a problem that is very easily dealt with if she is and the governing party want to do so.  (h/t Sullivan)

The kind of argument that equates Obama's level of experience with Palin's inexperience is only convincing to seventh graders or people with the mind of seventh graders. Schmidt/McCain might be making the cynical bet that there are enough Americans whose thinking has not progressed beyond that level, but I think they have miscalculated. I know people have tried to make a big deal about Obama's inexperience, but isn't it more about being qualified? Experience contributes to one's qualifications, but it's not the only or most important thing. Does any serious person question Obama's qualifications at this point?  Does any serious person think that Palin is qualified to take over if McCain dies?

Apparently Palin enthusiast Millman quoted above doesn't think so. The whole resignation after appointing a successor pledge is a hoot, and a perfect example of the kind of intellectual knots a certain kind of conservative will tie himself up in to justify the absurdity of his positions. If we follow this guy's logic, Obama should resign on the first day of office so the more experienced Joe Biden can take over.

Mile High (Updated)

Finally some vigorous attacking. One-two punch from the Dems--Gore, then Obama. Al Gore finally, energetically, compellingly indicting this administration for its malfeasance.  2008 Gore would have blown 2000 Bush out of the water. Richardson addressed the torture and rule of law themes earlier, and Gore hit them strongly as well.  Obama, alas, did not. Obama's, nevertheless, speech was very effective, and exceeded my expectations. 

I think that the line of attack, for instance, suggested in the line that it's not that McCain doesn't care, it's that he doesn't get it could be very effective. The Grandpa Simpson theme is implied in it. The theme about tough talk and bad strategy when it comes to foreign policy also works along those lines, especially regarding temperament and judgment. Another good attack theme: Republicans making a big election about small things. All these are pregnant with future possibilities.

More positive themes: Something is stirring--either you feel it or you don't. His appeal to the American ideal and American promise at at time when we have lost our sense of common purpose is exactly the kind of thing the country needs, and he needs if he's to win over the mushy middle. I liked his appeal to find common ground and understanding regarding the controversial cultural issues that divide us--abortion, gay rights, gun rights, etc.  If he can get the country to bracket those, it will be a major coup.

It seemed to me the Obama that has been missing since June has at long last showed up again. He must define rather than be defined.

I'm feeling temporarily at least, less cynical.  This guy does have potential.  It's just a question of whether he realizes it.  He's a project in development. More as I absorb the details. Or not.

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UPDATE: Some more thoughts. The content of the speech was primarily addressed to Main Street. I thought is was masterful in being both post-partisan and aggressive--It's not that McCain doesn't care, he just doesn't get it. He's a nice guy, and you love him, but he's like your grandpa who just doesn't understand your music and your problems--and you don't want him running your life. It's an effective way to aggressively attack McCain and the GOP legacy without demonizing him and it.  Sure, he gets a little cranky and petulant, but he's a good guy, really.  He's grampa! They don't have to stress that he's physically old, but that he's attitudinally old; he's simply out of touch and clueless--he doesn't even know how to use a computer, and only recently mastered two or three buttons on the TV remote. It's not that he's an evil Republican; he's just not presidential caliber material.

Post partisanship is not primarily about compromise but about saying "Enough" to all the nonsense our politics has become, and it defined McCain very effectively as just another purveyor of that out-of-date nonsense. That resonates with what most sane people know about our political culture. But they need somebody who can credibly call it out and credibly present another possibility. People are intrigued by something new, but they're afraid of it at the same time.  The trick is to represent the possibility of something new and better while at the same time representing something safe.  

Now it's an open question whether Obama can effect something new and better, but no one in my memory can conjure an imagination of it for a Main Street audience more effectively than he. That's his meal ticket. Job number one for Obama is to change in a fundamental way the framework of our political discourse.  He will do it not by sounding like Ted Kennedy or Hillary or even Joe Biden, but like Lincoln. He has to be kind and conciliatory, but he has to be strong and fair.  He has to redefine the center, and he has to do it by appealing to America's best sense of itself and its basic ideals of fairness and compassion. In this sense, his speech was Lincolnesque.

The speech reminded me of what attracted me to this guy in the first place.  My fear was that he was going to go all timid and become Kerry deja vu. But the fire was there again. If he keeps it stoked, he will win.  First win, then change the terms of the conversation, and then we can start talking about restoring the constitutional infrastructure of this country that the GOP has systematically worked to dismantle.

What's Missing?

Greenwald has a good post today that puts his finger on what I was feeling as I listened to Biden's speech last night.  It wasn't so much what he was saying as what he wasn't.  It just sounded as though we were in the middle of another typical election rather than in the middle of one of the profoundest political crises in our history. Greenwald says that the Democrats

are largely guilty of doing what they typically do: appearing listless and amorphous by standing for nothing other than safe and uncontroversial platitudes. The loudest reaction Bill Clinton provoked last night was when he proclaimed, in passing and without elaboration, that Obama is "ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." So much of the case against the Bush administration -- much of what has fueled high-level Democratic energy to remove the GOP from power -- has been driven by the GOP's radical transformation of the core political values of the country, trampling on the Constitution and overtly embracing policies that are completely anathema to how Americans perceived of [sic] their country.

Republicans often use their Conventions as an opportunity not just to feed voters what they want to hear but to induce them to see the world the way the GOP wants them to see it. Even if it's true that the voters who Democrats are targeting care little about these issues -- and that's a precarious assumption -- the Convention is still an opportunity to persuade them why they should care and, at the very least, to fuel Democratic resolve to win and to demonstrate to non-core-Democratic voters that there are political values that Democrats actually "stand for." They've done very little of that. The virtual nonexistence of these issues in the key Convention speeches, the failure even to take a stand on virtually any of it, seems to be as much of a political failure as it is a failure on the merits.

The so-called kitchen-table issues are important, and maybe the Dems focus on them will be enough to get them into the White House, but it's not enough to get the country on a healthier trajectory.  Obama during the primaries talked about the necessity of changing the mentality that has come to define normal reality within the Beltway.  Perhaps the problem is that too many of the people at the Denver convention are too comfortable with that mentality to attack it in convention speeches. 

Look, we can talk all we want about what the American people are concerned about.  But ultimately the effectiveness of Obama's candidacy and his presidency, should he be elected, will depend on his using his oratorical skills and the bully pulpit he's been gifted with to educate the American people, to inspire and to motivate them to support his program to dismantle the current Beltway mentality that governs our national politics.  People settle for what they feel comfortable with unless somebody offers them the possibility of something more interesting.  It seems like he's trying to blend in more than to stick out.

Rather than try to persuade the American people that he is somebody they can feel comfortable with, he should exploit what makes him unique and compelling. So far he has failed to do that. The question is whether he will at some point summon the courage to do it.  I am not minimizing how difficult such a task is or how much courage would be required to do it.  But that's the difference between mediocrity and true greatness.

This is not a year for politics as usual. We need someone to step up and speak truthfully about what's ailing us, and to show us a plausible strategy toward finding a cure. The American people are ripe to move forward.  They know how bad things are. They know it's not just about the economy, but that economic problems are rooted in a deeper collective sickness. Jimmy Carter got it right in his now infamous "malaise speech", and we rejected it for "morning in America". We're paying the price big time.  The question is whether Americans have the collective moral fortitude to snap out of this thirty-year, Reagan-induced moral torpor. 

I'm not expecting a speech tonight that will address these concerns, but maybe Obama will surprise us.  I'm expecting, rather, more safe Democratic platitudes and toothless, formulaic criticisms of the Republicans.  I believe a majority of Americans are ready for stronger stuff than this, but it's going to take someone who has the courage to break out of these tired formulas to give it to them.  We didn't get it from Biden last night.  Will get at least a taste tonight?

Biden's Speech

Not bad, not great.  He doesn't come across as a robo-pol--but there was nothing memorable in the text.  I think the video and his son Beau's introduction were more compelling. I liked the part about his mother. The kitchen table stuff was pretty standard fare. And the attacks on McCain were curiously abstract and lacked the humor or wit you would hope for from a guy like Biden. That was pretty disappointing.  It just seemed like another forgettable speech written by speechwriters. A missed opportunity.

I haven't listened yet to the Clinton speech, and I may not.  i just want to be done with the Clintons.  I'm afraid all the hype surrounding the Mile High Stadium hooplah tomorrow will lead to unfulfilled expectations.  We'll see.

Quote of the Day: Victor Navasky

His [Obama's] mistake is the same one that the last two Democratic candidates for President--Gore and Kerry--made. The assumption (shared by too many campaign consultants) that the way to woo those in the center is to move towards the center. Arianna Huffington, I believe, has a point when she advises, "Instead of targeting the swing voters he should target the unlikely voters." But I would argue there's nothing wrong with targeting the swing voters. What's wrong is to pander to them on the assumption that the way to win them over is to move towards the center.

The reason they are undecided is precisely because they are not Democrats or Republicans, and they don't care about left vs. right. They care about finding someone they can connect with, a candidate they can trust. And as soon as they see a candidate who appears to be listening to his consultants and pollsters rather than being true to himself, they see a candidate who has betrayed what they care about most: authenticity.

Because this is so clearly a Democratic year, Obama may well win even if he persists in traveling down the illusory middle. But if that's the way he wins, it will be too bad, because he will be a President without a mandate--or with, at best, a diluted one. (Read more.)

Quote of the Day: Bradley Burston

"There will be those for whom race is the deciding issue, but I believe their numbers are few. For many more, well-meaning and tolerant people, I believe the reason is fear. It is fear of the unknown, but not only fear of the unknown Obama.

"I believe that the real fear is finding out what lies behind the big lies of George Bush, and, more ominously by far, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and a host of other neo-con-artists...

"This foreign visitor doesn't believe that this election is about race. It is about the difficulty and the sacrifice involved in changing course, acknowledging error, actively working for a better common future.

"It is a battle over the kind of complacency and fear of change that put into the Oval Office its most underqualified occupant in living memory. Perhaps that is how the joke statistics should be understood - and taken seriously.

"But what the foreign visitor finds the most frightening, the most dangerous, is the voter who, after eight years of abject catastrophe, continues to pray "Please, please, give me a reason to vote for the person who says that things are all right, after all."

"Someone like Bush." 

(By way of M.J. Rosenberg. Read more.)

Dem Convention (Update)

I won't have much to say about it or about the GOP convention.  Most people who still bother to read this blog know my point of view, and given my low regard for the media and the Democratic Party and its way of doing things, its pageantry just doesn't interest me. I can't imagine anything happening during either convention that isn't predictable or in any way important or interesting.

And does anybody really care what I think about Michelle's speech last night or Hillary's tonight?  Why should you? I'm not interested in the perceptions game. I'll leave that to the Chris Matthews of the world. The whole business makes me ill-tempered and unpleasant to be around. I owe it to my family to keep my distance.

Nevertheless, my son, who will be a first-time voter this November, in his spirited idealistic way is very much into this election and the whole process, and I am trying hard not to dampen his enthusiasm for Obama.  It's important for his soul's sake that he not become a cynic too soon.  So he keeps me tied in to a certain extent. If he alerts me to anything unusual or interesting, I might pay a little more attention, and wind up writing about it here.

I want Obama to win, and I wish him well, but if he wins I'll be paying more attention after January to see if he'll be able to use his talents to move the momentum of state in a healthier direction. I'm not without hope that he can get something done, but my expectations are low.

It's impossible for me to take McCain seriously, although I'm quite aware he might find a way to win. If a majority of Americans are dunderheaded enough to give him the presidency, then it will force me to reconsider whether Democracy in a country like ours is really possible. For surely we are living among a people who are unwittingly voting their democracy into annihilation. It's happened elsewhere; it can happen here.

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UPDATE:  Hillary's speech: Thank God we don't have to listen to this tedious, platitudinous,  robo-pol for another four or eight years. It is just painful to have to sit an listen to her.If Obama has achieved nothing else, it's saving us all from more of that.  Dear Lord, is it really over now?

P.S. Olbermann, according to my son, called Hillary's speech a home run.  Hardly.  At best it was a sacrifice bunt. You'd think an old sports guy like him would know the difference.

On Biden

I am indifferent to him as a politician.  He's always struck me as a typical Beltway hack.  But if he brings some toughness to the campaign, more power to him and Obama for choosing him.  At least he's not the odious Evan Bayh.

Naomi Klein on Transformational Politics

I think she captures perfectly the Obama political reality at this moment--its limitations, but also its potential if Obama chooses to realize it:

What all transformative movements have in common is the quality of speaking up to an aspirational public, to our best possible selves. Transformative movements act like the world is better than it is, and—when they work—they inspire the world to live up to this partial projection. The Obama campaign, has, in moments, embodied precisely that quality: Obama conjures a better America and that better America shows up for him. But political moments do more than speak to our best selves; they harness that quasi-mystical power to make radical demands to transform the real world. The Obama campaign has not done this, not on any issue at the core of our current crisis. Not on global warming, the war in Iraq, the housing crisis, health care, underemployment, or the assaults on civil liberties. Not a single Obama policy is unequivocal in its clarity and morality, which is the essential quality of a transformative movement.

The campaign's most radical demand, even if unstated, is the idea of electing Obama himself. It is Obama—and not his plans for the presidency—that is the ultimate expression of the "movement." If the process ends there, the Obama campaign becomes less like the civil rights movement and more like the lifestyle brands in the late '90s—the Nikes, Microsofts, and Starbucks that expertly captured the transcendent quality of past liberation movements, and our desire for meaning in our lives, to build their brands.

Of course the real fault is not Obama's, but ours. We have forgotten the kind of risk and work it takes to build transformative mass movements, and so settle for iconography instead. That said, he'd better win.  From Mother Jones.

The FISA vote, whether consciously or unconsciously, was his statement to the world that he did not see himself as this kind of transformational figure.  And I think the world has to accept him at this word. That isn't to say that he would be a bad president, but only that he'll be an ordinary one.  And Klein is right; it's up to the rest of us to make something happen, not some icon. 

Well partially right. Significant movements need catalysts; they need figures who trigger or awaken an awareness of a people's collective better self, and that's the disappointing thing about Obama's timid approach since the primaries ended. This might change. Maybe some flame now banked in his soul will break out, but I'm not counting on it.

Summing Up Saddleback

Digby:

I know it's a small sample, but as Warren points out, social conservatism is not just about religion, it's a"'worldview" and McCain is the one who shares it, not Obama.

Sullivan:

How weird that an evangelical audience would give its biggest applause so far on domestic oil drilling.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. I guess the question is how many people with that worldview, even with Warren's more moderate version of it, can find common ground with someone like Obama. Has Warren ever come out to condemn the war?  Warren, it seems to me, is more Old Testament than New Testament, but I'll stand corrected on that by anyone who is more familiar with him. (Forrestwalker, your take?)

P.S. It could be argued, I suppose, that Obama's audience was broader than that.  Others on Main Street were watching, and for them Obama's hour might have changed some minds, even if it changed few in that audience in Orange County.

Bacevich on Moyers

Bacevich is somone I've admired since reading his New American Militarism. (Links to posts I've written about him can be found here, here, and here.) A self-described conservative, he, along with some of the writers for American Conservative Magazine, is among the few conservative public thinkers who fits the description principled conservative.  If there were more conservatives like him shaping the public dialog, we might actually be able to get somewhere in defining a common ground that serves the best interests of the country as a whole. 

This interview with Moyers, which can be seen here, is a breath of fresh air and a dousing with cold water.  He represents a way of looking at our situation outside the categories of left and right, Republican Democrat, and shows us the truth about what has become of us.  He's all about sanity and restoring the idea of America, and about seeing clearly through the delusions and  manipulations of the political class.

An excerpt from the transcript that echoes some of the things I've been saying about how our poliltics has devolved into a ceremonial democracy:

BILL MOYERS: I was in the White House, back in the early 60s, and I've been a White House watcher ever since. And I have never come across a more distilled essence of the evolution of the presidency than in just one paragraph in your book.

You say, "Beginning with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, "the occupant of the White House has become a combination of demigod, father figure and, inevitably, the betrayer of inflated hopes. Pope. Pop star. Scold. Scapegoat. Crisis manager. Commander in Chief. Agenda settler. Moral philosopher. Interpreter of the nation's charisma. Object of veneration. And the butt of jokes. All rolled into one." I would say you nailed the modern presidency.

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, and the - I think the troubling part is, because of this preoccupation with, fascination with, the presidency, the President has become what we have instead of genuine politics. Instead of genuine democracy.

We look to the President, to the next President. You know, we know that the current President's a failure and a disappoint - we look to the next President to fix things. And, of course, as long as we have this expectation that the next President is going to fix things then, of course, that lifts all responsibility from me to fix things.

One of the real problems with the imperial presidency, I think, is that it has hollowed out our politics. And, in many respects, has made our democracy a false one. We're going through the motions of a democratic political system. But the fabric of democracy, I think, really has worn very thin.

Because the people abdicated their responsibility to be vigilant and to hold their representatives accountable.

Somewhere along the way we lost of our sense of what the proper role for the president is, and in doing so we began the slow degradation of our democracy to a point where the executive branch sees itself as accountable to no one. The problem with government is not that it's too big, but that we allowed it to operate without any accountability. It's as if Americans have an infantile need for a strong big-daddy leader to whom they long to entrust absolute authority. Nothing could be further from what the idea of America stands for. The power elite has been adept at finding a way to exploit that need to get things set for themselves in a way that insures their continued domination of the system. 

In the long run its about developing politically mature electorate. That's a long-term project, and it's a task for the cultural sphere.

Lind on Realignment

Interesting article in Salon today by Michael Lind about the evolution of the Democratic Party from the party of Jefferson/Jackson to the party of Roosevelt to the party of McGovern, and now looking forward to the possibility of a realigned party of of Obama. This post links to themes I developed in my post last week entitled "Weak-Kneed Liberalism."

I think there's much to debate about the points he makes in his article, and some of the more thoughtful commenters to the article raise questions similar to ones I would raise. But he's saying in this article essentially what I've been saying since Day One:  No realignment takes place so long as social conservatives feel locked out of the Democratic Party.  The only long-term realignment that will restore Democracy in this country requires that the secular left and the traditionalist right push culture war issues to the side and form a coalition around economic issues and a commitment to the constitution and the rule of law and on insisting that our government officials be held accountable for abuses of power and illegality.  

Is this possible?  At this point it would appear a long shot, but until it happens, the power elite have the electorate exactly where it wants it, divided and bickering over stuff that should have secondary or tertiary importance in in relationship to issues of enormous consequence developing now in the political sphere.

Read Lind's article in its entirety, but for those who don't have access to Salon, some excerpts at the jump.  I will probably update later when I have more time to write.

Quote of the Day: Tom Frank (Updates 1 & 2)

From his June 18 WSJ column:

Yes, things look good for Democrats this year. Poll after poll indicates excellent prospects for Barack Obama. And the dispatches from House and Senate races are even better.

The comfortable course of action for Democrats will be merely to pocket the coming windfall, to burble about how they have lifted the curse of ideology from the land, to replace the current gang of free-marketeers with their own gang of free-marketeers, and to resume the merry triangulations of eight years ago. The ins will give way to the outs, and they will rule happily ever after . . . until the next culture war takes them by surprise and sweeps them again from their contented perch.

Another route is possible, though. If they are willing to go beyond the regal rhetoric of post-partisanship, Democrats might find that they are, for the first time in decades, running against a philosophy of government that has utterly discredited itself. Should they choose to make 2008 a referendum on conservatism itself, they might deliver the knockout blow. They should start with the bad ideas that have delivered such disastrous consequences.

This is precisely the danger we face with a big Dem victory: complacency--See, the system works!--and so while the Dems get fat and lazy and accomplish little, the movement conservatives and buccaneers who dominate the GOP regroup to plan their next assault.

This will happen unless the Dems find a way to de-legitimate movement conservatism in the public imagination. This is an educational project that has to be effected by end-running the MSM whose principals have no interest in supporting such a project. Can it be done? I don't know, but Obama has the rhetorical tools and the pulpit to do it if he decides he wants to. There will be a ton of pressure pushing him away from taking such a project on. Is there some way to exert counter-pressure on him to do it anyway?  Maybe, but I don't see it.

Given everything we know now about how the GOP works, I still find it amazing that he and his party are taken seriously by anyone except those who benefit from the continued perpetration of this fraud? The GOP retains this legitimacy only because the MSM bestows it for its own self-interested reasons and because the Dems are so afraid to vigorously hold the GOP accountable for perpetrating it.

The crisis we face is not about the struggle between right and left; it's a crisis of accountability. It's about whether a system of governing that is publicly accountable is possible for us anymore. At the moment it simply is not.

P.S. More here at TPM on why Evan Bayh is a sign that we're in for at least four years of complacency and business as usual. And it should also be noted he was one of seven Dems to vote to confirm Mukasey.

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UPDATE: From Frank's column today:

If he is to prevail in November, Mr. Obama cannot allow the right to profit from the discontent stirred up by their own misbehavior. Talking about "hope" is very nice when you're leading by 20 points, but what the Democrat has to do, now that John McCain has evened up the score, is take control of public outrage. He should not recoil from the bitterness that's out there. He should speak to it.

At the very least Mr. Obama must begin to offer an explanation for why things have gone so very wrong over the past seven years. He should tell us how, say, the failures of Iraq reconstruction were made inevitable by the conservative philosophy that "government should be market-based," as Mr. Bush once put it.

Besides, attacking Mr. McCain himself is pointless. The man no longer stands for anything. He has transformed himself from a maverick into a cipher, a hood ornament on a hit-and-run machine. He has no more political content now than the constantly changing cast of cynical right-wingers aboard his campaign plane.

That's why this election must be a referendum on Republican rule and the destructive doctrines behind it. It is a contest to put the blame where it belongs.

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UPDATE 2: On a related note, Digby:

If the Obama justice department tries to fire anyone, even if they are found to be sending private emails directly to Karl Rove, they will be accused of "partisanship" and there will be a volcanic wingnut hissy fit. The safest jobs in the US government are now for right wing, social conservative non-political appointees and civil servants.

The Democrats have achieved the worst of both worlds: conservatives will pay no price for the blatant politicization of the government during the Bush administration and the Democrats will be powerless to clean house once the government is in their hands. That worked out well.

The infrastructure for a future right-wing government is in place, and it's not going away unless the Dems and sane Republicans actively work to dismantle it. Letting sleeping dogs lie might seem like an attractive strategy in the short run, but that's an example of what I mean by complacency. These dogs are going to wake up and they're going to be vicious, and they know who their masters are. 

Better to deal with them now while they're sleeping.  What dealing with them now means is up for discussion, but I think a simple evaluation of credentials and competence might be the starting point.  It doesn't have to mirror the ideological template imposed by the Monica Goodlings of the past regime.

Weak-Kneed Liberalism

Interesting post here by Sara Robinson in which she uses D.H. Fischer's Albion's Seed as a tool to explain how voting patterns follow cultural patterns that are rooted in the four colonial-era English cultural groups: Puritans, Cavaliers, Scots-Irish, and Quakers.  My early 2006 post entitled The Spirit of Whiggery covers much of the same ground.  What we have come to think of as "liberalism" is rooted in the culturally Whiggish legacy of the Puritans and Quakers; what we have come to think of as "conservatism" rooted in the legacy of the Cavaliers and Scots-Irish. If you're unfamiliar with the characteristics that define the attitudes of these groups, read Robinson's post. She provides a clear, concise summary.

It's interesting to see how American political history is shaped by this cultural patterning. The Republican Party was a Whig creation and the Democratic Party a Cavalier/Scots-Irish creation. The old Republicans, therefore, were more culturally liberal and intellectual, while at the same time the party of the Northeastern and Midwestern financial elite. The original Democrats were more culturally traditionalist and economically populist. The realignment that took place in the period between 1968 and 1980 disconnected the parties from their cultural roots, while each maintained its economic philosophy.

During that realignment, the Dems lost their ownership of the culturally conservative, southern-agrarian and northern blue-collar Dems as it became identified with the more educated, culturally liberal Whigs while they retained, at least in theory, its economic populism; the GOP lost its Whiggish northeast cosmopolitanism as it sought to embrace conservative evangelicals and Catholics, while it remained the party of the northern business elite now in alliance with converted southern elites. The party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Nelson Rockefeller became the party of Reagan, Tom Delay, and Newt Gingrich.

This alliance of both southern and northern economic elites in the Republican Party is not something you hear much about.  These southern and northern elites were at loggerheads during the post-Civil War period until the birth of the New South in the 70s. That this is no longer the case is significant because if before this conflict between regional elites acted as a check to each faction's power, now as a united force there is virtually no check on them.  And while Whiggish ideas about social responsibility played on the consciences of the old northeastern business elites, whatever buffering effect that might have had hardly exists at all as the kind of wildcat buccaneering of Enron or the exploitative plantation mentality of Wal-Mart have become more the norm in Republican business culture as the party lost its northern Whiggishness and became southernized.

There is also a significance in this re-alignment insofar as it separates much of the electorate from it political/cultural roots.  I'm not sure I understand it, but I think it contributes to the way politics has become a fantasy divorced from lived reality for so many Americans. It's as if all the circuits have shorted out, and our politics is composed of the acrid-smelling smoke produced that floats in the air afterward.  In any event, the Dems are currently the legatees of the Whig spirit which in the party's inception it opposed, and the GOP continues as the legatee of the Whiggish moneyed classes but now in a strange coalition with the southern Bourbon elite, the pugnacious Scots-Irish, and other low-education, religiously conservative immigrant groups.  

Buccaneer Government

Tom Frank makes the point that we've been making, but it's worth repeating:

And for all their peculiarity, these people -- Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Newt Gingrich, and the whole troupe of activists, lobbyists, and corpora-trons who got their start back in the Reagan years -- have for the last three decades been among the most powerful individuals in America. This wave of misgovernment has been brought to you by ideology, not incompetence.

Yes, today's conservatives have disgraced themselves, but they have not strayed from the teaching of their forefathers or the great ideas of their movement. When conservatives appoint the opponents of government agencies to head those government agencies; when they auction their official services to the purveyor of the most lavish "golf weekend"; when they mulct millions from groups with business before Congress; when they dynamite the Treasury and sabotage the regulatory process and force government shutdowns -- in short, when they treat government with contempt -- they are running true to form. They have not done these awful things because they are bad conservatives; they have done them because they are good conservatives, because these unsavory deeds follow naturally from the core doctrines of the conservative tradition.

And, yes, there has been greed involved in the effort -- a great deal of greed. Every tax cut, every cleverly engineered regulatory snafu saves industry millions and perhaps even billions of dollars, and so naturally securing those tax cuts and engineering those snafus has become a booming business here in Washington. Conservative rule has made the capital region rich, a showplace of the new plutocratic order. But this greed cannot be dismissed as some personal failing of lobbyist or congressman, some badness-of-apple that can be easily contained. Conservatism, as we know it, is a movement that is about greed, about the "virtue of selfishness" when it acts in the marketplace. In rightwing Washington, you can be a man of principle and a boodler at the same time.

Corruption and ugliness have always been a part of our political culture, but there are degrees of ugliness. When Republicans are in charge it gets particularly ugly because the philosophical constraints against ugliness are so weak. When the primary role of government is believed to be to serve the interests of a buccaneering business class, what constraints are there to define what is appropriate or inappropriate? In this buccaneering culture, the challenge is to subvert the rules, to find the loopholes, to see how far you can push things without getting caught. When the buccaneers put their own people in government offices that are designed to constrain the excesses of their buccaneering, there simply are no constraints, and the buccaneers run riot. We've seen the results in the last eight years.

People can argue that the Dems are just as bad--and maybe locally in places like Chicago and New York they are. But at the federal level a measure of the difference in their governing philosophy is the relative competence with which Dem governments are run--and the significantly greater number of indictments and convictions of government officials when the GOP is in charge. The Bush administration would set records for indictments and convictions if there was any hope that the Dems would hold them accountable. But the Dems seem now to have acquiesced to the governing culture shaped by the GOP since Reagan. And that's what makes the system broken beyond any realistically imaginable remedy.

There is no counterbalance to the buccaneering; there is no constituency potent enough to effect a counterbalance--certainly not Labor or the netroots. All the Dem leadership cares about is increasing its majorities, and apparently it doesn't see holding Republicans accountable as a necessary element in advancing that cause. And the Dem leaders know they are deeply implicated in this rotten system and how vulnerable they are, and they fear reprisals when that day comes when the GOP takes over again.

Clinton didn't go after Bush regarding his role in the October surprise and Iran/Contra when he took office. He didn't want to appear as though he was looking for political reprisals or to criminalize policy differences. The GOP showed its gratitude with an impeachment. The Dems don't stand on principle and neither do they have the killer instinct that the GOP has. That's why there's little reason to think things are going to change in any fundamental way. There might be a temporary lull in the buccaneering, but the buccaneers will simply have retreated to their island hideaways to plot their next moves.

The best we can realistically hope for in the short run is for things to be run with a little more competence and a little less corruption. Even if Obama were to become far more assertive than he has so far shown a willingness to do, he will have little support in Congress. Even the best people can't do it on their own. Maybe Obama will surprise us. But if it turns out that DLCer Bayh is his VP, it's another piece of evidence that he is neither willing or capable to change the fundamentals that currently structure the way Washington works.