Democrats Vow Not To Give Up Hopelessness
I was holding forth to Taylor the other day on the fascinating subject How will the Democrats screw this up? Today she sends us this from The Onion.
Ugh. A little too close to the facts to even be enjoyable, no? The GOP has had total control of the government for five years, during which time its leadership has shown itself to be riddled with corruption and utterly incompetent. And yet the Democrats can't capitalize on this.
So how are the Dems going to screw up this gimme in '08. My current guess: a Clinton/Kucinich ticket making gun control its flagship issue. Or maybe a Kennedy/Biden ticket stressing honesty and personal responsibility...um, not that that issue would fly very well with the Democrats...
On a more serious--by which I of course mean 'paranoid'--note, I sometimes think that the Dems can't win because the Republicans have developed a completely new approach to politics and government. The president is just a front man for the Republican machine now. Ronald Reagan and Dubya were just amiable fools, backed up by the real powers in the party, the Men Behind the Curtain. This is fiendishly efficient, because the front man only has to be likeable. In the old days, the presidential candidate had to be both reasonably likeable (so he could get elected) and pretty damned competent (so he could actually run the country if he did). The Democrats are still operating under the old system, so they have to sacrifice some likeability for competence (since candidates who are maximally likeable and maximally competent are rare). The Republicans now just focus on likeability, since it is the guys behind the scenes who run the show.
And, of course, though presidents can only serve two terms, the guys behind the scenes can just move from one administration to the next, a kind of perpetual governing cabal. That's why there are so many Reagan--and even Nixon--folks in the current administration.
The vice presidency, incidentally, would make a decent place to install one of the guys who really run the show. Reagan had Bush '41, Bush '43 has Cheney. There's a glitch in this system, though: since these guys tend to be less likeable, it makes it harder to get them elected after the front man has served his two terms. That's why it doesn't matter that Cheney is both too unlikeable and too old to be president--there were never any plans to even try to get him elected. The GOP'll just re-load with some other amiable-seeming moron--e.g. George Allen--and start the whole thing over.
I don't really believe all that...but I don't exactly not believe it, either. I worry about it is what I do.
I was holding forth to Taylor the other day on the fascinating subject How will the Democrats screw this up? Today she sends us this from The Onion.
Ugh. A little too close to the facts to even be enjoyable, no? The GOP has had total control of the government for five years, during which time its leadership has shown itself to be riddled with corruption and utterly incompetent. And yet the Democrats can't capitalize on this.
So how are the Dems going to screw up this gimme in '08. My current guess: a Clinton/Kucinich ticket making gun control its flagship issue. Or maybe a Kennedy/Biden ticket stressing honesty and personal responsibility...um, not that that issue would fly very well with the Democrats...
On a more serious--by which I of course mean 'paranoid'--note, I sometimes think that the Dems can't win because the Republicans have developed a completely new approach to politics and government. The president is just a front man for the Republican machine now. Ronald Reagan and Dubya were just amiable fools, backed up by the real powers in the party, the Men Behind the Curtain. This is fiendishly efficient, because the front man only has to be likeable. In the old days, the presidential candidate had to be both reasonably likeable (so he could get elected) and pretty damned competent (so he could actually run the country if he did). The Democrats are still operating under the old system, so they have to sacrifice some likeability for competence (since candidates who are maximally likeable and maximally competent are rare). The Republicans now just focus on likeability, since it is the guys behind the scenes who run the show.
And, of course, though presidents can only serve two terms, the guys behind the scenes can just move from one administration to the next, a kind of perpetual governing cabal. That's why there are so many Reagan--and even Nixon--folks in the current administration.
The vice presidency, incidentally, would make a decent place to install one of the guys who really run the show. Reagan had Bush '41, Bush '43 has Cheney. There's a glitch in this system, though: since these guys tend to be less likeable, it makes it harder to get them elected after the front man has served his two terms. That's why it doesn't matter that Cheney is both too unlikeable and too old to be president--there were never any plans to even try to get him elected. The GOP'll just re-load with some other amiable-seeming moron--e.g. George Allen--and start the whole thing over.
I don't really believe all that...but I don't exactly not believe it, either. I worry about it is what I do.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:04 AM
3 Comments:
Winston,
Why don't you really believe that, at the federal level, we are governed by the shadowy leadership within a political party, and not by the elected front men? You have mustered the evidence, and it's quite convincing. The Nixon/Reagan/GWBush continuum and the Project for a New American Century neocons in the current administration are strong data points supporting the thesis. Contrast the Clinton administration, where it certainly looked like Bill Clinton was setting his own agenda, and succeeding or failing to implement it as his political skills allowed. You shouldn't worry about whether you are right, you should worry because you are right.
Shadow governments don't worry me. A secret government operating from the shadows must maintain the illusion of democracy, which means the government remains democratic in practice. (See Kant on agents operating under the idea of freedom.)
What worries me is a government that no longer feels the need to maintain the illusion.
Another vote for empiricism: If it walks like a duck... The evidence that Duhbya is an amiable dunce is everywhere in plain sight.
9/11: I'll just sit here looking scared stiff until someone tells me what to do. Meanwhile, Darth Cheney is "authorizing" the downing of a civilian airliner, though it didn't come to that.
Air incursion causing panicked evacuation of the seats of government: Don't interrupt Duhbya's bike ride.
Katrina: I'll just stay here clearing brush.
Any off-the-cuff remarks: Duhbya doesn't know what to say if he's off his cue cards.
Now, clearly, Duhbya does have the power to make appointments. Otherwise, Harriett Miers would never have had her 15 minutes of infamy.
But about that likability: Duhbya's dripping insincerity is so grating on me that I immediately couldn't stand him when the elders of the Republican Party anointed him to run in 2000. (Yet more evidence that he's a figurehead.)
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