A place for Liam to post essays, comments, diatribes and rants on life in general.

Those fond of Liam's humor essays, they have been moved here.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Looking Forward, Not Back

Has anyone else noticed how the conservative line changes, depending on who is in charge?

When the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, the conservative establishment repeated "it's time to look forward, not back" so often that it became almost unthinkable that anyone do any investigations into the Bush administration, even though it's pretty clear that there are some things out there which absolutely should be looked into. It's the same old tired list opponents of the Bush administration have touted for ever. Warrantless wiretapping. Waterboarding. Overuse of mercenaries instead of military forces. And on and on.

But now, the situation is reversed, it is a Democratic President and they have retaken at least part of the Congress, and now they're signalling their intention to investigate everything, to crawl up the Administration's metaphorical butt with a microscope and examine anything, with several having pre-decided the outcome of those investigations, calling the Administration "the most corrupt in our history".

Funny how when it's THERE guy, the Democrats would be "focusing on the past" and "not doing the work the American people want them to do" if they investigated some very real questionable behaviors about the last guy, but suddenly they're "doing their patriotic duty" when it's trying to take down a guy on the left.

And the thing is, I think this is going to backfire on them. The American people aren't stupid. We're not always the brightest bulbs in the pack, collectively, but we're not entirely stupid. In two years, if the economy has continued its slow climb out of the ditch and things are looking better, and Obama can say "Look, things are better, we've gotten us out of trouble, and while we were doing it, the Republicans were doing nothing but trying to take apart my agenda and investigate me", I think it will work to their significant detriment.

Of course, it's so difficult to prognosticate these things, because any sort of major unforeseeable (another major terrorist attack, another Katrina, a major assassination or terminal illness in a major leader, etc) could tip the balance, but all things being equal, I think a repeat of the "throw mud against the wall until something sticks" saturation bombing of the early and middle Clinton years will have the same effect now, aiding Obama to win a second term, and possibly even leading to congressional losses for the Republicans in 2012.

Filibuster

I'm a little bit concerned about this proposed change to the filibuster rules.

Understand, this is the same "nuclear option" proposed by the Republicans when they were in the majority in the Senate, the only difference being that they were suggesting making the change as part of an effort to override the minority on a specific bill, while the Democrats are suggesting it as a generic rule change without a specific bill in mind.

But I am, and have always been, of the opinion that the center is really where we want to be, and while it can be maddeningly slow to see anything change in Washington, that same inertia helps keep us on a generally centrist path.

To use an analogy, a cruise ship (which takes quite a long distance to change direction) makes a much more consistant path overall than a unicycle, which can veer back and forth like a drunken sailor in the red light district. I really don't think the solution to any of our current problems is to start bouncing back and forth between the left and right extremes, policy-wise, like a ping pong ball in a paint mixer.

As much as it can seem like a good idea to the majority to remove the impediment provided by the minority, it will come back to bite them when they next are the minority and find they have removed one of the few remaining bits of power left to them to prevent a full on partisan swing.

I didn't like it when the Republicans suggested it, I don't like it now. The filibuster might one day become obsolete, if we can break the two party system. But as long as we have essentially only two parties running the entire show, someone is going to be the majority, and there is a significant safety buffer in knowing that the minority still has the power to at least slow down the more extreme bits of legislation.

And while that power CAN be misused (have you checked the statistics on how many pieces of legislation the minority Republicans have blocked since Mr. Obama took office?), that doesn't make it any less necessary. Otherwise, we could easily see this country swing back and forth from socialist paradise to corporate paradise, from property rights to civil rights, back and forth in perpetuity.

As frustrating as it is, I LIKE that our government moves slowly.

 

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