The abandonment of hope’s audacity by our new President came quickly and with immense disappointment.
The promise to “change the way we do business in Washington” and the hope of some lessening of the partisan shoot-outs that too often replace-or at least impair-the challenge of governing remains just that: a promise.
It’s early and there’s still plenty of time to honor promises, but the scorecard today does not show impressive grades.
Obama supporter Warren Buffet perhaps said it best:
If you’re in a war, and we really are in an economic war, there’s a obligation to the majority to behave in ways to not go around inflaming the minority. If on Dec. 8, or maybe it was Dec. 7, when Roosevelt convened Congress to vote on the war. He didn’t say, ‘I’m throwing in about ten of my pet projects.’
The President created an environment where those deeply concerned about the enormous implications of the massive spending proposals, the overhaul of America’s health care system, the cost of cap and trade carbon emissions proposals, among others, were forced to galvanize into action least the steamroller crush them. They “inflamed the minority.”
Other than Rahm Emanuel’s desire not to “waste” a “serious crisis,” there is no justification for imposing on the Congress and the nation the burdens of controversy and the inevitable conflicts of these prodigious programs when we are deep in the worst financial crisis of most of our lifetimes.
The President clearly chose to insert highly controversial and enormously complicated initiatives onto the congressional agenda, when all attention should be focused on those issues of immediate concern and for which answers remain elusive.
This was deliberate and unwise. As Warren Buffet noted it diverts and dilutes attention from the most pressing concerns and guarantees that opposition must emerge from GOP quarters (and some Democrats) when the real effort should be towards working together to lessen the impact of this financial tsunami on those families struggling to find the means to stay afloat when jobs are lost and homes are threatened.
Whatever the merits of these initiatives, including the latest education package (in which there is much to welcome), they can wait a few months.
Earmarks are different and indeed are bipartisan. Republicans are equal opportunity abusers, except for a handful like John McCain.
But the President promised to “change Washington” and the elimination of earmarks was one of the abuses he was to target. But when given the opportunity to lop billions of dollars off the $400 hundred billion spending lollapaluzza that he just signed, he ducked the throw using D.C. type misdirection that a bill funding this year’s government was last year’s business.
Go figure. Business as usual by any other name is business as usual. Congress won’t police itself. The President must say “Read my lips. No more earmarks.” And mean it!! Dare we still hope?
So, as they say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, or something like that. This President raised our hopes for meaningful change in Washington on the partisan landscape and in the abuses of the public trust, so much a part of Washington’s ethos.
He did go through some interesting public gestures towards Republicans in the early days, but then allowed the Democratic Congressional Leadership to behave with partisan fury by excluding Republicans from any meaningful input into the first stimulus package this year and thus the virtually unanimous GOP opposition.
Again, he still has time and it would be wrong to give up yet. But his first steps are not encouraging.
Wyatt Durrette is a Director at DurretteBradshaw, PLC (www.durrettebradshaw.com) and co-founder of the XDL Group. He served three terms in the House of Delegates and was the Republican candidate for Governor in 1985.
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