Posts tagged politics

Because I am a junky, I have been watching this “Arlen Spector Defects to the Democrats” thing. I think it’s interesting, not because I think he’ll ever vote differently than he has in the past, but because he stayed still politically but the goalposts of where the Republicans end and the Democrats begin moved.

Parties end. Parties die. The Whig party didn’t survive even though it had some pretty stalwart luminaries among its number — Daniel Webster, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln. When the Whigs ran up against the ugly wall of slavery, many of its leaders changed parties to Republican (ie, Lincoln) or dropped out of politics entirely. The Whig party became more and more insular until it dried up and died. And it happened quickly.

Sometimes I feel like the credit crisis is taking our modern GOP with it. As several core views have been repudiated — removing regulation of the markets, starving the Government while forcing unfunded mandates, trying to fuse religion with state issues, etc. — the inner core has become more insular and less interested in reality. It feels like the GOP was heavily in debt and over-leveraged in all their policy-based investments and they, too, have discovered that too much debt is not, at the end of the day, a good thing and all their risk models were wrong. But the old model worked in the past, so much like the banks, they are clinging to them for all their worth and not realizing that they are totally insolvent. “Cut taxes!” doesn’t do you any good when people aren’t working and not paying taxes. Cut what taxes?

It becomes this inward deflationary political cycle. People flee and they join this weird new faction called the “Conservative Democrat” or cling to their Independent registrations. Primaries in most States are closed so the GOP is forced to put up crazier and crazier candidates to get that hard right cranky white guy core to vote just so the candidate can get trounced by those new Is and Conservative Ds in the general. I can’t see this getting better. Only 20% of registered voters now identify as a Republican. I’m pretty sure they all live in Utah.

The GOP is trotting out a “rebranding” effort. I want to shake them and scream, “It’s not about branding.”

This sort of brings it around to Arlen Spector who was, no doubt, told by the GOP kneebreakers to get in line or leave. He took a good hard look at this totally wackjob Club for Growth guy and the GOP kneebreakers and the slow dissolution of his Party and he did what the Whigs did in 1856-1860 — took a good, hard look at what was going on and said, “Nah, that’s okay. You can keep your wackjob, GOP. I’m good. Thanks.”

Watching the brand shiny new Obama White House is like watching Michigan Football before it started to Drastically Suck beyond All Comprehension: two fruitless runs up the middle and then OH hand off to the half-back in the back field. Two fruitless runs up the middle and then OH we decide to pass and hey that sometimes works. Two fruitless runs up the middle and then check this out it’s the Option.

This generally makes me want to throw things at the TV. Here we are at 3rd and 8 again for the 42nd time this game! Are they going to do something now?

I am picking up the same frustrating vibe. Sure, yeah, they’ll eventually drive down the field but look at all the messing around first. The newest incarnation is the complete so-called “Geitner Plan” that was “released” yesterday. There’s no plan. It’s the political incarnation of running up the middle for maybe a yard. We have a banking crisis, the banks are refusing to lend (still), foreclosures are still hoovering capital out of the market, banks are turning into capital-eating zombies, and the entire system needs a good, solid audit from the top down. We have lots of bankers who are out of work who I bet would like a paycheck to become government auditors.

What are we going to do? Not what Geitner and Larry Summers recommended to Japan (which they eventually did) or the Sweden plan of lopping off heads of zombies. Oh no. We’re going to do… what? Sort of bad bank? Sort of not? Sort of be very nice to banks and half-privatize, half-nationalize and not really bother with audits or try to figure out what we wrong and force the banks to suck up their bad risk and bad bets and close the doors on the ones that are clear failures? Because we most certainly have zombies running around going “Oh give us 6 months and our assets will be worth something OH give us 6 more months and we’ll have it figured out OH just 6 more months really…”

And now Team Obama, who clearly plays by the Big 10 Playbook, will be forced to sort of try another run up the middle and will get roundly thunked for it and then come around and go oh I guess we should come up with something real if we’re going to make the down.

Gah. I still love Obama for his Incredibly Wonky Ways and his ability to craft an actual sentence but come on guys. I’d rather you take an extra two weeks and present something real than whatever nonsense is being picked off the bottom of your shoes.

Funniest by far Inauguration article I have seen today:

How many inaugural balls can one man endure? – By Seth Stevenson – Slate Magazine.

The tux and the Segway really make the story.

I didn’t go down to the Mall for a whole host of reasons but I am watching it on CNN HD on my couch. If we didn’t have Katie Rose I am sure I would have been down there yesterday and then been staking out my spot since 3am, but such is life.

For those at home who are watching on TV, the Washington Post is running a really magnificent article on Obama’s Journey from disaffected, angry 20-something who felt the need to give up a high paying New York job in International Banking to go beat the streets of Chicago to the President of the United States. It is worth a read if you are either waiting for things to happen or coming home and warming up from freezing for hours and hours outside.

Barack Obama is not just the first African-American President. He is the first African-American leader in the Western World. He is never going to be perfect. Like all American Presidents, we will never really be satisfied and Liberals, above all, like to grouse and whine and complain. But today is a day to step back, and simply marvel at the enormity of what has happened here. The country will never be the same. Yes, it will be a terrible haul, and yes, there will be massive mistakes, and yes, things will happen we don’t like. But the change is tangible and constant and a marker on American History. It is a seismic shift.

Although, in the end, we’ve hired a black man to clean up a white man’s mess.

And wow, the Mall on CNN HD looks cold and so packed no one can move.