Democratic Ideas
In comments to the previous post, there's a mention of one of my least favorite Rovian implanted memes: the Democrats have no new ideas.
Why is this one on my list? Because this meme works to short-circuit any actual discussion of Democratic ideas; it comes out of Chris Matthews's or Tim Russert's mouth, and the discussion is how the Democrats can't do any better. Any better than what? Invading a country that posed no threat to the United States, expending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands, tens of thousands of human lives, for . . . what, exactly? Was that a novel idea? How about launching said war without any revenue to pay for it, i.e., waging war on a credit card? That's a new idea, but certainly not a good one. How is this for a novel idea: let's bypass the FISA Court and engage in electronic wiretapping willy-nilly. That's novel, alright, and illegal. It boggles my mind that any thinking person could possibly entertain the thought that the Democrats could do worse.
The meme is simply a way to change the subject from the failure of the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress. The complete and utter failure of the GOP's policies over the last fie years.
But it works. It gives the "objective" media a "balancing story" to the story of GOP failure: "Well, even if the Republicans have made a massive cluster fuck out of everything, the Democrats don't have any ideas."
This is curious. Is it "new ideas" that the American people want? Is fiscal discipline a new idea? Not really. Is actually having some idea how you're going to fund your programs a new idea? Nope. Would it be a new idea to actually have a policy team making policy in the White House, as opposed to the political operation running everything? So it's not really new ideas that people want (to the extent that ideas matter).
I would even go further: Are there really any "new ideas"?
But what about the Feingold resolution? Is that a disaster in the making? That's the Rovian meme. Again, is it an old idea to hold leaders accountable for their actions, for their past statements of fact? Is it an old, worthless idea, to hold investigations, to find out why things turned out the way that they did?
posted by Number Three @ 3:27 PM
5 Comments:
Emery, you are such a goofball. You've responded to my comment with more finger pointing.
Fingerpointing is richly deserved. I cannot think of an administration that has done more harm to American finances and national security.
Bush inherited a government on reasonably sound fiscal footing, though facing future problems associated with the baby boomers' retirement. What did he do? He cut taxes, put the country back into big deficits and created a massive new entitlement program to pay for retirees' prescription drugs. Double whammy: the fiscal problem is much worse on both the revenue and the spending side.
On Iraq, he took a problem (dealing with Saddam Hussein, an aging out-of-touch dictator) and made it 100X worse. The Middle East is more unstable; a regional war is not remotely a far fetched scenario as the violence in Iraq continues to spiral out of control. The forces of Islamic reaction have gained ground all through the region. Most Muslims around the world believe the US is hostile to them and their religion. Meanwhile, we're borrowing 150 MILLION dollars per DAY just to fund ongoing Iraq operations, a policy that actively harms our national security and standing in the world.
There are no easy answers or solutions to the problems this administration has created, which is why the GOP wants to shift the conversation to: "well what are you going to do about it?". But before the GOP can assert a right to initiate that particular conversation, they need to answer the following: why, given the GOP's disastrous track record, should we trust it to solve the problems it's responsible for creating?
What solutions do the GOP have to offer? Wait, I know! Stay the course in Iraq; make the Bush tax cuts permanent; and give the president the line item veto. Talk about tired and lacking in new ideas.
To be clear, I agree that fingerpointing is deserved, that we need better fiscal policy. Had I been president, I would have handled the situaton in Iraq much differently. But none of that changes the fact that fingerpointing will not win the hearts of swing voters. For that reason, I think the censure effort, if it goes beyond merely raising public awareness, will cast a long shadow on 2008 in the absence of an explicitly articulated democratic plan to remedy the situation.
Raising public awareness is exactly the point.
Feingold's censure motion focuses on Bush's illegal wiretapping scheme, which has received no real scrutiny in Congress and far too little accurate coverage in the press. It's still being described, following Rove's spin, as a "terrorist surveilance program" intercepting Al Qaeda calls to the US, rather than as a massive data mining operation where the executive branch observes potentially millions of innocent American citizens without congressional or judicial authorization. Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress are aggressively stonewalling any investigation of the program. Specter's little speech last week about how FISA is unconstitutional would be merely an embarassment if it weren't so ominous. The Bushies have turned into full-on Hobbesians, trafficking in fear to create an unchecked and unaccountable national-security executive that rests upon the affirmation of the masses. Even if you like Bush personally, you ought to be worried. John Locke liked to say that there's nothing more dangerous to the people's liberties than a king they like--just imagine what the next guy will do, and how hard it will be to get that freedom back.
Tmcd's description of this beast as merely an "illegal wiretapping scheme" or a "massive data mining operation" is too kind. It also involves physical searches without a warrant. See US News and World Report -- a generally conservative magazine -- for the story:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060327/27fbi.htm
I find their parsing of Gonzales' tortured language on this matter and its implications persuasive.
Post a Comment
<< Home