It is hard to find Oliver Stone movies that do not deserve to be on someone’s A List. W., which attempts to chronicle the life of President George W. Bush, may be one of the few from this noted director to deserve to be ranked somewhere between the A and the B List. It is not a B movie, as plenty of money was spent on it and it has overall good directing and acting. Still, it does not measure up. If there is a definitive movie on George W. Bush, it has yet to be filmed. This one, filmed and released while Bush was still president, feels more like a made for TV movie.
I finished W. thinking, “This movie probably misses who George W. Bush is by a fairly wide mark.” As regular readers know, I loathed him as our president. Moreover, his kind (conservative Republicans) tends to give me the hives. The only Bush I know is the one I saw on TV or heard on the radio. Even so, I am plenty skeptical that the George W. Bush played here by Josh Brolin comes close to portraying George W. Bush the actual man.
W. could almost be classified as a satire, because Brolin portrays Bush as someone who is probably even more inept than he actually is. In the movie Stone seems to be using Bush as his little Voodoo doll, pricking it to see if anything will bleed. From the tone of the movie, it is clear that Stone loathes the guy. He has lots of company there. The movie often feels jumbled together, throwing actors who resemble people we know too intimately (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove and Powell in particular) into tightly choreographed scenes that collapses the eight years of his presidency. It attempts to explain George W. Bush but left this viewer more confused than ever.
As portrayed by Stone, Bush has serious daddy issues with his father and 41st president of the United States, whom he calls Poppy. Poppy is constantly bailing out junior, who both needs Poppy and wants to be free of him. The movie makes innuendos that I am not sure are backed up by fact, for example that Bush impregnated a woman before marriage and that Poppy arranged for the abortion. The movie also suggests that Bush resumed drinking after the crap in Iraq got too deep. Granted, Bush’s behavior these last few years has gotten more incoherent, but that could be due to other things than picking up the bottle again. Perhaps like Ronald Reagan, these are signs of early Alzheimer’s.
Likely part of my reaction to W. is my wish to forget about the man. Bush himself may be retiring quietly in Dallas, but principles from his administration are still regularly annoying us. Specifically former Vice President Dick Cheney, creepily portrayed in the movie by Richard Dreyfuss and Karl Rove (portrayed by Toby Jones) refused to leave the national stage just because their administration was finally out of power. The last eight years still makes me feel queasy from time to time; so reliving them in this 129-minute movie frequently had me wanting to reach for the Pepto Bismol.
The movie frequently moves back and forth on the timeline. Bush comes across as dangerously naïve and gullible. I could be wrong, but I doubt the man was quite as naïve and gullible as he is portrayed. Stone suggests that Bush’s infatuation with Evangelical Christianity was due to his simpleminded nature and a way to separate himself from Poppy, who adhered to a dry and milquetoast Episcopalianism.
Nor are Brolin and James Cromwell (who play’s Bush’s father) convincing as younger versions of themselves. Trying to emulate W’s fraternity days at Yale, Brolin looks like a 40 something guy pretended to be in his early 20s. Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush looks too young. Ellen Bursytn as Barbara Bush looks too thin and seems too nice. Scott Glen as Donald Rumsfeld looks even creepier than the man he portrays (if that is possible). There are many actors in the movie that I suspect exaggerate the people they portray. Not that they necessarily do a bad job with their portrayals. Jeffrey Wright looks a little young to portray Colin Powell, but he carries himself with conviction. Thandie Newton (portraying Condoleeza Rice) portrays Rice as superficial and disengaged.
If the movie is an attempt to explain Bush to the world, then I think the movie leaves the viewer more confused. Bush comes across as someone who does not know who he is or how he fits into his large dysfunctional family. His personal savior is not so much Jesus Christ as Karl Rove, who latches onto Bush early in his career and tries to mold him into the image of someone who can meet the emerging demographics that Republicans need to capture.
Stone must have a fatal attraction to politicians, since he has also made movies about John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Still, overall W is disappointing considering Stone directed landmark films like Wall Street, Platoon and Natural Born Killers. If he had to make the definitive movie about George W. Bush, he should have waited another decade so we could appraise the man more dispassionately.
What’s with all these teabagging parties planned on Tax Day, April 15th? Fox “News” seems to be urging Americans — well at least their brand of “real” (read “white and conservative”) Americans — to come together for “tea parties”. The aim of these parties is to protest what they perceive as onerous new taxes enacted recently as well as express their concern about the perceived new socialist administration and congress. As I pointed out after the elections last year, these folks apparently do not know what real socialism is. To them, anything the government does to help those making under $50,000 a year is socialism.
The way Americans voted last November could not possibly be a natural reaction to the last dreadful eight years of largely Republican control. Teabaggers are greatly alarmed, not just over hikes in cigarette taxes, but also over Obama’s $3.5 trillion dollar budget. They say Obama is taking federal debt to new and stratospheric new levels.
However, all the debt accumulated before January 20, 2009 is completely forgivable, particularly the massive debts accumulated during the Bush and Reagan administrations. See, it’s good debt if it goes to national defense or to show American muscle in hellholes like Iraq. It is bad debt if money goes to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure or to give low-income working parents affordable childcare. Is that clear? It makes perfect sense to the teabaggers. The rest of us think they are worthy of derision. I will be chortling while watching their rallies on television on April 15th.
These teabaggers suffer from one common characteristic: cognitive dissonance. In their peculiar world, cutting taxes is always good. Apparently, government could function just fine with no taxes whatsoever! You can bet all the teabaggers out there, who are now so concerned about our burgeoning national debt, would be okay with more debt if they were back in charge, providing they got more juicy tax cuts and it could be used to get rid of more of the Axis of Evil, perhaps North Korea this time.
So let them congregate and wave their teabags. The right to peaceably assemble is protected in our constitution. Americans are entitled to their opinions, no matter how crazy and ill informed they are. I, along with millions of other Americans, have the right to laugh at their lunacy. Of course, if we had had some of their new found fiscal conservatism back in 2001 we would not have gone on a tax cut binge and raised the national debt up to ten trillion dollars. We could have used some of that extra tax money to fund things like bridge improvements so people did not have to fall headfirst from their cars to a watery grave in the Mississippi River. Perhaps rather than add another trillion dollars to our debt, we could have levied an Iraq War tax. Instead, our Republican Congress did what other cowardly Congresses have done and put it on the national charge card. After all, Dick Cheney told us that deficits don’t matter. What he meant to say is they don’t matter until your party is out of power and it can be used for political leverage.
Today many of these self-professed patriots want to start a new American revolution. Apparently, working through the democratic process is fine only until you become overwhelmingly marginalized. Then it is okay to have a revolution. Hence, the need for tea bag parties to allow their nut jobs to connect and perhaps actually bring about a new American revolution.
Timothy McVeigh might have fired the first shot, so to speak, when in 1993 he killed 168 people and destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Other incidents suggest some other right-wingers take revolution seriously. Just last week, a well-armed man in Pittsburgh murdered three police officers and wounded two others when police responded to a disturbance at his house. According to a friend of the alleged shooter “Pop” Poplawski, “always said that if someone tried to take his weapons away he would do what his forefathers told him to do and defend himself.” Many teabaggers are apparently convinced that President Obama wants to take away their guns, even though he has explicitly ruled it out. Teabaggers though are a paranoid bunch and are buying guns and ammunition in record numbers anyhow. Demand is so high that police are having a hard time buying ammunition.
After President Bush won reelection in 2004, many of my liberal friends including my wife made noises about moving to Canada. They were convinced America was entering a new dark age. Some of these people actually moved. Now, just four years later, some teabaggers are apparently want to throw in the towel when democracy becomes inconvenient. Perhaps they could move to Alaska and join the Alaska Independence Party, like Sarah Palin’s husband. Since they are now looking at a prolonged period of being out of power, to some of them revolution is both acceptable and justified. As for us other Americans, who apparently are satisfied with the way government is now being managed, since we are wrong our opinions do not matter. It appears that the many Americans are armed to the teeth and could facilitate such a revolution if they chose. Moderating some positions to return to power is not an option.
I doubt too many teabaggers will actually take up arms, although they could inflame enough of the nutcases in their midst to cause more terrorist incidents like the Oklahoma Bombing. Some might call for a new civil war, or at least a partition where the South rises again as its own country. There taxes will always be low, gays will be kept in the closet, global warming can be blithely ignored and Ward and June Cleaver will always sleep in separate beds.
It will not happen. What will happen is that, over time, the pendulum will swing back their way again. It is inevitable. They just need to exercise some patience. This is America. One party never controls all the levers of power for long because, as Republicans proved, corruption eventually ensues. The inevitable result is a backlash. To regain power, compromising their so-called bedrock principles must happen eventually, and that will be hard for teabaggers to accept. Whites are quickly becoming a minority and nothing can stop this change in our national demographics. The Republican Party will likely evolve into a more libertarian and less religious party.
Teabag parties speak to Republicans’ political impotence, which for now is very real. Thus far, Americas are quite happy with their Democratic Congress and Administration, perhaps because they are working in the best interest of the American people for a change. We will never return to the way things were. The way things were was never the way teabaggers thought they were anyhow. We have always been a multiethnic and pluralistic culture.
The mixture in our national melting pot is changing once again in the 21st century. Political parties that hope to prosper in this century had best put down the teabags and instead start appealing to our new and changing demographic groups.
A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to reconsider its 2006 decision to deny girls younger than 18 access to the morning-after pill Plan B without a prescription.
The 4,317,119 births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of the baby boom.
Behind the number is both good and bad news. While it shows the U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend, the teen birth rate was up for a second year in a row.
I was born in 1957, at the height of the baby boom. It was an excellent year for cranking out babies. Apparently, 2008 was as well. One of the reasons that 1957 was an excellent year for bringing babies into the world was that birth control was largely unavailable. The FDA approved an estrogen-based pill in 1957, but for menstrual pain only. A variation of this pill was not approved for birth control until 1960. The first plastic IUD was made available in the United States in 1958, but many women found it uncomfortable to use and serious side effects like uterine bleeding were common. Condoms were available, although they were often hard to procure given that birth control was generally frowned upon and public discussion about sex was largely taboo. When men discovered how much pleasure was lost using those old-fashioned condoms, many preferred to take their chances. In effect, in 1957, contraception was largely unavailable. With plenty of fertile men and women in their prime baby-making years, the nation’s maternity wards were full.
Society today is quite different but many things are still the same. Men and women continue to have sex, and teenagers in particular feel their oats more than most. Condoms can now be readily procured with no questions asked, but it generally falls on the male to buy them and only men can use them. The contraceptive sponge turned out to be a so-so contraceptive device, better than nothing, but no guarantee for preventing pregnancy. For years it was off the market, and was only relatively recently reintroduced in 2005.
The birth control pill is still only available by prescription. Plan B is contraceptive available without a prescription that allows women concerned that they might be pregnant to change the situation, provided they take the medication within 72 hours of intercourse. However, the Bush Administration found Plan B to be deeply offensive. In its view, it was an abortion drug, should not be available to anyone, but in particular should be restricted from use by minors. It gave marching orders to the FDA to drag its feet on approving the drug, which went on for three years. Finally, the FDA approved it for adults only. Even though there was no credible evidence that it was medically unsafe for minors, it required pharmacies to place the non-prescription drug behind the pharmacy counter, and to ID purchasers who appeared to be minors.
While birth rates are up for all age ranges of women, it is disturbing that they are up for teenage girls in particular. Doubtless, some of these girls were trying to get pregnant. Some of them would have liked to have had the option to purchase Plan B discretely off the shelf.
The Republican theory was that teens could be deterred through abstinence education. There was also doubtless the hope that these adolescents would confide in Mom or Dad before taking a major step like becoming sexually active. I doubt many of these knocked up girls were comfortable with having such conversations with Mom and Dad. I also doubt many of them knew that if they could get to a Planned Parenthood clinic they might have gotten free or reduced costs contraceptive and counseling. One thing is clear: after having sex, they could not get a Plan B from their local pharmacy. So at least some (and likely a great deal of) teenagers gave birth to little baby girls and boys that would otherwise not be here. Call them Bush Babies. The Bush Administration tacitly agreed that if it would mean compromising their principles then it was okay to bring thousands of unplanned babies into the world. In their crazy heads, this apparently was a more moral choice to have babies out of wedlock than to allow minors to procure a safe over the counter contraceptive designed specifically for these teenage encounters with adult life.
Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol (who recently gave birth to an out of wedlock child and who is now estranged from the baby’s father) recently provided some pragmatic advice. Doubtless Republicans everywhere were stopping their ears full of cotton and singing “La la la la la” when she told Fox News that teenage abstinence was not realistic. The sadder-but-wiser Bristol Palin also suggested that teens should wait ten years before having a child.
Even if the Wasilla, Alaska Wal-Mart had Plan B on its shelf of other non-prescription drugs, there is no guarantee that Bristol would have purchased it. At least if it had been available she would have had the choice. She could be planning for college now instead of trying to figure out how to raise a baby with an absent father.
If abstinence is not realistic, the reality of teenage birth is something far more tangible. Bristol could do teenagers everywhere a favor by documenting her life as an unwed teenage mother. Meanwhile, we can only hope that with a new administration it will not be long before this counterproductive rule on Plan B is rescinded and seventeen year olds like Bristol can postpone the responsibilities of parenting until they are mentally and financially up to the task.
I could not help but marvel today watching Barack Obama’s historic inauguration on television. It is true I marveled at seeing a black man take the presidential oath of office. If you had asked me in 2004, I would have guessed we would have to wait another two decades before we were collectively mature enough to elect a black man as president. It is also true that I marveled at the million plus Americans standing shoulder to shoulder on the Mall in freezing weather. They stretched from the Capitol all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, with most cheering and waiving American flags. What I found the most marvelous of all was the peaceful transition of power itself. In many, if not most places in the world, a transfer of power of this magnitude is a cause for civil war or rioting. In the United States, it is a time for celebration and partying. Every four or eight years the world has a chance to witness and marvel at America’s peaceful transfer of power.
I felt the spirit of George Washington alive today in the city named to honor him. In his life, George Washington was so popular that could have been president for life. Instead, Washington performed perhaps his most patriotic act by declining a third term in office. In doing so, he showed us fledgling democrats that regular changes in leadership were healthy for a democracy and that our constitution transcended the personalities in power at any given moment.
Thanks in part to George Washington’s precedent another peaceful transfer of power went off today like clockwork and with great celebration. At precisely noon, President Obama became our 44th president, even though he had not yet taken the oath of office. At that exact time, the President’s military aide carrying our nuclear launch codes moved from President Bush’s side to President Obama’s side. Following protocol the new president saw the retiring president out of the Capitol and waved goodbye to him as a helicopter carried him out of Washington. Doubtless inside the president’s desk in the Oval Office was a letter from Former President George W. Bush to President Barack H. Obama with a customarily letter of congratulations and some personal thoughts on the transition of power.
As a civil servant myself, I watched this transfer of power at a somewhat lower level. Last Thursday, I was invited to a high level meeting. I sat across the conference table from our Associate Director. Also in the room were representatives from another department that we meet with quarterly. With one working day left on the George W. Bush Administration, the transition of power was on everyone’s mind and was freely discussed. Everyone was completely matter of fact about it and deeply respectful of the process which by then was well underway. Our Director was a political appointee and wanted to hang on in his job. Hearing nothing from the incoming administration though he knew what was expected and tendered his resignation. He did so not because he wanted to but because that is the way our system of government works. By losing his job, he demonstrated his respect our constitutional process and for the judgment of the American people.
Arguably, the outgoing administration was one of the most egregious in ignoring the law and the constitution. Yet, even this administration could not ignore our democratic electoral process. Had the outgoing administration, like so many banana republics, tried a coup d’état, I have no doubt where the loyalty of our armed forces, our secret service and our civil servants would have lied. Any such attempt is doomed to fail in America. Americans would not allow it. If push came to shove, the military, as is true of civil servants like me, are required to put the constitution above the orders of the president.
It says so much about the character of our country that these values are hardwired into us, in both good times and bad. Back in 2003, I penned a post where I lamented that America had lost its soul. Perhaps it was lost for a while. Perhaps our constitution was a more than a bit tattered by the latest Bush Administration. Yet, we survived and we did so in part because of George Washington’s example and the orders given by the people who once every four years weigh in on who their leader shall be.
Each inauguration is like a heartbeat in the life of our country. The mere fact that it happens like clockwork, in good years and bad, is proof that our country shall endure. Through regular repetition, these events ensure, however imperfectly, that our democracy will continue and we will keep moving forward toward a more perfect union.
Why watch a movie about a disgraced President Richard M. Nixon being interviewed some thirty years ago by a British television personality? What possible relevance does it have for 2009? It has more than you would think, given that we are in the last two weeks of the disgraced Bush Administration. A series of four interviews were broadcast in 1977 between the reclusive Nixon and British TV host David Frost. This was three years after Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace over his obvious complicity in the illegal Watergate cover up.
At the time, our current vice president, Dick Cheney, was the Chief of Staff to Nixon’s successor, President Gerald R. Ford. Many assert that it was Dick Cheney who is the current mastermind behind expanding the authority of the president beyond what most believe are its constitutional limitations. Where did Cheney pick up this idea? Toward the end of the movie, you will see reenacted the famous scene where President Nixon gives the opinion that if the President of the United States says something is legal, then it is. At least Nixon then went on to say that this was probably an opinion not shared by most Americans. His view is clearly shared by Dick Cheney. Arguably, Dick Cheney has spent the last eight years living out Nixon’s vision of the presidency to our own national shame.
Therefore, the timing of Frost/Nixon now playing in theaters is probably not coincidental. You had to have been born in the 1960s or earlier to have any remembrance of Nixon as president at all. Consequently, for many Americans, Richard M. Nixon is someone wholly unexplored. In Frost/Nixon, Director Ron Howard can acquaint younger Americans with arguably our slimiest president.
As an ex-president, Nixon was widely reviled and loathed. He needed his Secret Service protection because it was unlikely he would have survived otherwise. Yet, in many ways Nixon’s likely crimes, which were preemptively pardoned by President Ford, seem like a minor kafuffle compared with the actions of President George W. Bush. Had he not been pardoned, Nixon would have been impeached and convicted for the serious crime of obstruction of justice. George W. Bush though gets a pass for deliberately and flagrantly violating our laws on torture and wiretapping.
Back in 1977, when Americans heard the name David Frost, it was invariably “David Who?” Frost was a British TV personality known more for hosting lightweight shows than as a serious interviewer. Michael Sheen portrays Frost as a bit of an airhead and playboy, but also as someone unafraid to take major chances to enhance his career. He was indefatigable when it came to securing the coveted Nixon interviews. It took hundreds of thousands of dollars to land the interviews in the first place, which was during an era when “checkbook journalism” was considered unprofessional and was widely decried.
Frank Langella deftly portrays the disgraced former president. He demonstrates his ability in the first three interviews by dominating them. Frost can hardly get a word in edgewise. At the time, Nixon was obsessed with rehabilitating his image. His interviews with Frost became the means toward that end. He used every deft political skill he had acquired to succeed. Meanwhile, Nixon’s critics were obsessed with trying to get Nixon to admit he conspired to obstruct justice. Perhaps, they hoped, Frost could at least get Nixon to apologize to the nation for his actions.
The pressure is on both Frost and Nixon in the last interview. Nixon has to talk about the topic of Watergate, his least favorite topic, and Frost has to nail Nixon to the wall, which is much like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. At this point, Frost is seriously financially overextended and he is feeling desperate. He has put up much of his personal fortune buying the interviews. He has also undersold the interviews in the broadcast market. He needs a winning final interview to dig himself out. What happened is a matter of historical record, but in case you do not know, I will not spoil it for you here. Suffice to say though that even if you know what is coming, in some ways you will pretend you do not know.
Director Ron Howard does a great job pulling you into the post Watergate world. Nixon was a very private man, so it is hard to know exactly what those years were like. Thanks to Langella’s excellent acting, we have excellent speculation. The scene where a drunk Nixon calls up Frost is likely the invention of screenwriter Peter Morgan but it certainly helps spice up what would be for many a rather dry battle of wits.
Whether you enjoy Frost/Nixon will depend in large part on whether you were around when Nixon was president, as well as any curiosity you may have about our disgraced 37th president. It is a tightly focused film, equally as focused on the multifaceted Frost as our wily 37th president. Of the two, Nixon proves far more interesting.
Like most Americans who remember President Nixon, I grew up to feel ashamed of what he did to our country. After seeing Frost/Nixon I can better appreciate the tragedy of Richard M. Nixon, a Shakespearean character of the 20th century if there ever was one. Like our current president, he largely successfully hid from confronting the magnitude of his own mistakes, to his own diminution. He was not entirely successful in doing so though, thanks in part to David Frost.
I can understand why most Americans do not want to look at their financial statements. If you take the time as I did yesterday, it is scary. I do not have all the numbers for my household yet but a year ago, our net worth was around $938,000. Today our net worth is about $771,000. That means in just one year about eighteen percent of our wealth has vanished.
Our real net worth is probably lower. How much is our house really worth? I will not know unless I actually sell it, so I go with our county’s assessed value, which was done before the sub-prime mess fully exploded. There are no bright spots in my portfolio. Our T. Rowe Price New Era fund is worth just 52% of what we paid for it. If this is what our “new era” will look like, it does not sound hopeful. This fund was supposed to be used for our daughter’s college education. We are drawing on other funds for now but unless stocks turn around dramatically over the next few years, we will have lost money set aside for her education, despite investing consistently for fifteen years. It suggests that we would have been much better off putting the money in a mattress.
Our other funds show a similar but less dramatic story. I can only hope that since most of our investments are for the long term that they will actually turn out to be investments rather than places to throw away our good money. Perhaps Michael Moore had it right all along: keep your money in government insured accounts only. Granted, the money may not grow that much, but at least it is unlikely to disappear when you need it.
A year ago, my personal financial adviser forecast that there would be a significant economic upturn toward the end of 2008. This was based on reading and listening to other people he respects. He was proven wrong of course. I cannot hold it against him. Even Warren Buffet lost money in 2008. This was a year when no matter what financial strategy you chose, unless you invested solely in bonds, you were going to lose money. The Washington Post today crunched the numbers and put the total loss on Wall Street during 2008 at $6.9 trillion. How much money is that? Consider that the federal government spent about $2.9 trillion in fiscal year 2008. In one year our investments, and consequently our national net worth, dropped by more than the federal government spends every two years. Gone. Poof.
Despite his prediction a year ago, my personal financial adviser is optimistic for 2009. “We are now convinced that the stock market has either hit its low, or is very close to it,” he tells me in his latest newsletter. He may have something this time. One measure, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, shows signs of bottoming out. It slipped briefly below 8000 and has floated between 8000 and 9000 for a while now. If we have hit a bottom in the stock market then now is the time wise investors should be purchasing stocks. Of course, there is no way to know. With all due respect to my financial adviser, anyone who tells you they do know for sure is bluffing. We will only know in hindsight when the bottom occurred.
Unless you need money from your investments right away, the current value of your investments should not matter too much. What is more important is whether you retain your job and lifestyle. One thing we have noticed in our family is that many information technology jobs have become commoditized. This is not good news for someone like my wife, who lost her full time job on an IT Help Desk in 2004. She was making close to $50K a year. Her job was outsourced to someone who did the same work for a lot less money and who conveniently was not on “staff”. She now has a part time job doing similar work but took a substantial pay cut to get the job. As for benefits, the doctor’s office she works for has little in the way of a 401-K other than a general profit sharing plan. Unfortunately, the money they contribute toward it would not let you live on dog food in retirement. I am more fortunate but even in the software and systems development area where earn my living, many people are hurting. The bottom line is that our standard of living was hurt too and our income (adjusted for inflation) is down substantially from the start of the Bush Administration.
Perhaps this explains why three out of four Americans are glad to see President Bush leave office in nineteen more days. Bush has been saying in interviews that he will be judged by history as a far wiser president than we give him credit for now. I would suspect him of sniffing glue but I think hitting the bottle is more likely. I am confident that historians will not be kind, for reasons I outlined here, but which you already understand.
Our falling net worth is a meaningful measure of the price of incompetence and of the failure of government to, well, govern. It is not as if we were doing stupid or risky things. Rather, our government was doing stupid and risky things by placing inordinate faith in a free market and by actively reducing its oversight role. Frankly though in this economy I feel lucky. $166K of my family’s worth may have vanished in the last year, but we are both gainfully employed and we have maintained our standard of living.
Like most Americans, I feel that January 20th cannot come soon enough. I admire Barack Obama for having the audacity to believe that he can move us out of the national wreckage of these last eight years. When the dung is piled this high, it is hard to see daylight. While I hope my financial adviser is right, my intuition tells me that the dung is much higher than we think. I suspect it will be quite a while before we see the sun. Good luck, President Obama. You will need not just exceptional competence but extraordinary luck if our country is to successfully emerge from the wreckage of the Bush Administration.
If you want to know why the Republican Party is rapidly becoming the party of the Deep South only, you only have to observe the votes this week by Senate Republicans to block a bailout of our domestic auto industry. Thirty-five Republican senators blocked the bill, which actually won in a 52-35 vote. However, Republicans chose to invoke the cloture rule, which meant that 60 votes were needed to actually pass the bill. Therefore, it died leaving President Bush in the ironic position of deciding that maybe he needs to find $15 billion of the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street to keep millions of automotive and automotive related jobs from vanishing in this country.
Senate Republicans effectively gave the finger to Americans autoworkers this week, while also scorning them by telling them that they were paid too much. (This takes a lot of chutzpah when a senator’s salary is $169,300 a year, and a senator’s pension benefits for even a short stint in the Senate would make autoworkers swoon.) Yes, a bankrupt GM, Ford and Chrysler would probably destroy the evil United Auto Workers. It would also destroy the livelihood of millions of Americans, not just the autoworkers themselves, but a vast network of suppliers, dealers and merchants that eke out a living based on Detroit. But hey, that evil UAW would sure learn a lesson!
Yes, color the Midwest blue. If it is not entirely that way today, it will be in the next election. Moreover, if the key to winning the White House is to win Ohio, I may be in my grave before the next Republican ascends to the White House. (That would be fine with me, providing I live to a very ripe old age.) It used to be that you were showing your patriotism by buying American cars. Maybe you paid a bit more and maybe your car was not as reliable comparable with a foreign model. Nevertheless, it was “Made in America”, and that helped put food on your table, your neighbors’ tables and kept your community vibrant. Now in the bizarre world inhabited by a majority of Republican senators, you are showing true love of country by killing off our domestic automobile industry!
You see this is love. When your father beat your bums black and blue with his leather belt, he was doing it because he loved you. It was tough love. Never mind this sort of tough love that many of us endured growing up would now be considered child abuse. But it is okay to do it with auto industry workers and the vast numbers of workers who earn their living off our auto industry because, well, they are all adults! After all, it is not child abuse if they are not children.
Now the truth is that those of us who did have their bums beat black and blue by our dads (or in some cases, our moms, or both) do generally love them, in spite of their past proclivity toward inflicting violence on minors. You cannot divorce mom and dad. However, you can throw your senator out of office when their term expires. If they just don’t get it, that they are there to serve the interests of the American people, you simply vote for someone who does.
It is unsurprising that those Republican senators that voted for the bailout seemed to represent swing states. Few Republicans from swing states voted for the bailout, but there were some, including Allard from Colorado, Burr from North Carolina, Coleman from Minnesota, Ensign from Nevada and Gregg from New Hampshire. One thing these senators do have in common is that there is little or no auto assembly in their states. I have some advice for these senators: do not expect much in the way of contributions from the National Automobile Dealers Association for your reelection campaign.
There is no question that Detroit has been a follower rather than a leader in the auto business. Its management has been abysmal. However, the United Auto Workers has been accommodating about cuts in wages and benefits, somewhat begrudgingly of course, just not enough to keep up with the competition. What is true is that American automakers cannot be as agile as the foreign competition. For in most other countries the government provides universal health care for all, liberating manufacturers from these costs, or at least allowing them to be controlled. In our country, they are generally borne by employers. However, American cars no longer really deserve a bad quality rap. As Consumer Reports has documented, American cars are now often as reliable as their foreign competition. Part of the problem is the perception, which is often no longer true, that buying American means you will get a less reliable car.
You would think that if American autoworkers were so well paid that they would be living opulent lives. That is clearly not the case. The average assembly line worker for GM makes $28 an hour in wages. This is about $58,000 a year, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but not outrageous for a skilled assemblyman. All this assumes of course that they have steady employment. The auto industry has many ups and down, so it is unwise to count on full employment. It is true that autoworkers receive benefits too, but so do many of us who are employed. The cost of benefits is nowhere near the inflated $70 an hour figure bandied about. The Big Three’s pension costs are so high because they also have the legacy of pension costs for existing retired workers and their spouses. Foreign car companies do not have this baggage.
We should look on the $15 billion bailout as an interim measure to help put in place a structure that will make our car companies competitive again. At some point, this will likely mean shifting costs for pensions off the car companies and onto the taxpayer. Then American car companies can compete on something like an equal footing.
Meanwhile, by their votes, Senate Republicans have simply gained the contempt of many in auto producing states. Once you hold someone in contempt, it is nigh impossible to be held in esteem again. This is why Republican opposition to the automotive bailout was so needlessly counterproductive. Even the White House gets it. President Bush understands that his legacy rests on very shaky premises. To leave the White House with the American automobile industry collapsing around him will seal his fate in history.
Based on Senate Republicans’ foolish votes, people like me hoping to see even larger Democratic majorities have new reason for optimism. Any Joe the Plumbers out there living under the illusion that Republicans actually care about people like them are now thoroughly disillusioned. Instead, Senate Republicans are reminding them of their dear old dad and his leather belt, and senators are telling them to lower their trousers and assume a right angle. Why is Dad punishing them? Apparently, they had the audacity to expect a living wage.
This is not a happy time for Republicans. Let’s face it, it’s a bummer when your presidential candidate, despite being something of a pragmatic across the aisle type, still loses by seven percent. Nor is it good to have lost six more senate seats (with the possibility that two more may be lost) and twenty-four house seats. If you are a Republican, you have to look hard for any good news. The only good news I could find is that Tennessee is bucking trends and is becoming more Republican. Its legislature is now in the hands of Republicans for the first time since reconstruction.
It is no fun being out of power. Only in the U.S. Senate do Republicans have any hope of flexing their muscles and that is only if they keep Democrats from winning a sixty seat filibuster proof majority. A count of ballots in Minnesota, which is still underway, shows that challenger Al Franken is less than a hundred votes from taking the seat of incumbent Norm Coleman. In Georgia, if the dynamics of the race change just a little in a runoff election between incumbent Saxby Chandler and challenger Jim Martin, the seat could move into the Democratic column also.
To think that just a few years ago Republicans were doing arrogant things like redistricting Texas congressional districts out of turn. Its champion, former Republican House Whip Tom Delay, resigned his seat after being indicted for violating election laws in 2002. (To add insult to injury, a Democrat now holds his seat.) After Republican successes in the 2004 election, Karl Rove excitedly talked about a permanent Republican majority. Now Republicans have lost the presidency, are at least nine seats away from a senate majority, and would need to turn 41 house seats to gain a majority there. Even with governorships, things look bleak. They are down to only 21 governorships, and lost another Republican governorship this November. It sure looks like the Republican Party is becoming just a regional party of the Deep South. The Rocky Mountain States are slowly turning blue: Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico all voted for Obama this year. Even deep red Idaho decided it preferred Democrat Walt Minnick in District 1 to incumbent Bill Sali.
Consequently, Republicans are now engaged in a lot of soul searching. How to get back into power? Recent history would suggest that their best bet is to hope the current guys screw up. Republicans have to hope that Barack Obama turns out to be as inept as President Bush, but it sure doesn’t look that way. The appointments Obama is making as he puts his government together suggests we will have a deeply pragmatic new president, bent on making the government work actually for the people. What a radical idea!
History would also suggest to Republicans that if your message is not selling then you should change your message. Strangely, as I read news stories, the idea of changing the Republican brand seems to be off the table. Take this story in yesterday’s Washington Post. Two fairly young Republican activists have created RebuildTheParty.com web site. They want to be as successful in engaging the Netroots as the Democrats have proven to be. Good luck with that. As for maybe changing their ideology? That seems off the table. The article quotes Republican Vander Platts, “We have followed the misguided advice of ‘experts’ to abandon our principles and move to the middle so we can supposedly win. In essence, we have become ‘lukewarm’ on life, on marriage, on the Second Amendment, on limited government, on balanced budgets”. His viewpoint is widely shared among Republicans. They believe they can win by more forcefully asserting the same messages that has led to their massive defeats. Never mind that America has never been a pro-life country, or that it is warming towards civil marriage for gays, or that it is not exactly embracing limited government. By being obstinate on these losing issues and by assuming incorrectly that America is naturally a center-right country, Republicans will magically get back into power!
To which I, a passionate Democrat, stand up and applaud. Yes, please Republican Party; continue to tell America that if elected you will deliver more of what we do not want. Not that I think one party rule is necessarily a good thing, because Democrats have proven to be equally as corruptible and myopic as Republicans. I worked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 1980s where influence was purchased. For example, a $5000 contribution got you into “The Speaker’s Club” where you had regular opportunities to press handshakes with Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and provide him with your valuable perspective.
Republicans, you can keep your values and become a party that becomes increasingly irrelevant with every election. Or you can morph a bit toward the center and have a chance at governing again. In the spirit of bipartisanship, let me outline a Republican recovery plan.
First, the Republican Party has to fess up to its major and egregious mistakes. Mistake number one was George W. Bush. He has been something of a nuclear bomb to the Republican Party. He has been a total disaster of a president. You need to admit you made a colossal error in judgment by helping this guy become our president. Time columnist Joe Klein today said it accurately and succinctly: “At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks.” Do not let this guy anywhere near a Republican candidate again, not even for a closed-door fundraiser. Divorce yourself from the dude. If you see him walking down the street, cross over to the other side. Apologize to American. Here’s a script you can use. “You know, as a Republican I just have to apologize for helping to elect George W. Bush. If we had known he would turn out to be so bad, we would have voted for Al Gore. Sorry, we blew it.”
Second, you need to admit that you governed unwisely and badly when you controlled Congress. I hear a tiny mea culpa when you talk about getting back to your “core principles”. Except for a couple years under Newt Gingrich, I have never known a Republican president or a Republican congress that actually practiced what it preached about fiscal discipline. You need to put forward new candidates that have successfully demonstrated that the values they preach have worked. Frankly, you should consider any Republican in Congress to be tainted if they voted for the Iraq War or voted for bloated new federal programs or subsidies. I guess that means pretty much everyone in power in Congress except maybe Ron Paul. Do your best to get these losers out of office and maybe you can get some credibility back again.
Third, some policies you are fighting for the American people are never going to subscribe to, so stop bothering trying to sell these things. When you do, you just alienate voters. If you have to have these values, hide them until you get into office. No Democrat today with the exception of a few cranks will vote for gun control. Is it because they don’t believe in gun control? In many cases they would love to see gun control, but they also know it is no way to stay in power. Congratulations, you won the gun control debate. That debate has been won for generations, if not forever. Now you must give up a few of these loser issues too. You must stop bothering trying to overturn Roe v. Wade. Instead, you should be crossing the aisle to come up with solutions that reduce the likelihood that a woman will need to have an abortion in the first place. I don’t care how “right” you feel your position is, you cannot win this debate. Trying to do so merely inflames the opposition more, making your goal that much harder. Think of Sisyphus. You could save a lot more babies by giving money to Planned Parenthood so kids could get contraceptives than you ever will in a fruitless endeavor to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Fourth, give up the idea that you can solve deficits through cutting taxes. Its corollary: give up the idea that you can reduce the size of government. That’s only going to happen if we reduce our population. Why? Because the more of us there are around, the more services we need, the more we are in each other’s faces and consequently the more regulation will be required to keep us civilized. Another corollary: give up the idea that more freedom is always good. Freedom has consequences. If I have the freedom to drive a SUV, I am infringing on other’s rights to have a cleaner environment. We all want to have as much freedom as possible but we also want to be around as a species and have a clean planet in a couple hundred years too. We cannot accomplish it with unbridled selfishness masked as “freedom”.
Fifth, I hate to break it to you, but you guys and gals come across as really arrogant and obnoxious SOB’s. (I know the same could be said about many Democrats.) None of us have the answer to all of life’s questions. Nor does one philosophy fit all people. You need to develop a little humility. The good news is you have already mastered the passion thing.
So what should a future Republican Party look like? That’s for you guys to decide, because you can count me out. In general, you in the Republican Party urgently need to come to grips with the dichotomy between your glorified and absurd idealism and the real world the rest of us live in. If you want to earn back your street creds, give us safe neighborhoods, good schools and make sure the trash gets picked up on time. Show us leadership. If there is a new problem that government needs to address, tell us how you will find the money to pay for it. Your “you can have your cake and eat it too” philosophy is both ludicrous, dumb and has proven extremely dangerous. The wreckage is all over Wall Street and in our diminished portfolios. We see it in estimates that we need to spend a trillion dollars on our infrastructure alone just to get it up to code. That we have to spend this money now is because we didn’t spend it back then when we should have. You get the government you pay for.
If you seriously want us to have smaller government, make sure you point out to voters all the disintegrated roadways and bridges that will result. Or you can say these are common public assets and we all need to step forward and pay our fair share of taxes to fix them. The first few times you say this, it will come out weird. However, eventually you will be able to say it with a straight face. Say it often enough and you will believe it. It’s called stewardship.
So get real. Get grounded. Step away from the extremes. Be pragmatic. The best part of being a Republican is the hope and love of country that you express. Lose the naivety but keep the love of country, and join the rest of us in making this the best country for all Americans, not just people for who think and act like you.
Like most Americans, I am wondering why we have to wait fifty-eight more days for a new president. Couldn’t Bush and Cheney just tender their resignations now? Nancy Pelosi would then become our president for the next fifty-eight days until President-Elect Obama takes office. Yeah, I know Pelosi is a San Francisco liberal, but she could hardly make things worse than Bush and Cheney and she would be a caretaker only. At least someone with a brain would be in charge until Inauguration Day. Meanwhile, women everywhere would rejoice because we would have (however briefly) our first female president.
If Bush and Cheney had any sense of patriotism, they would resign right now. However, it looks like they will not only tenaciously cling to power until January 20th, but they are working feverishly to make sure their toxic legacy will last beyond the inauguration. Not only have they left us with an economy that is in shambles, in their final days they are busy creating future havoc. Regulations are furiously being written, sometimes bypassing the public comment process, to ensure that our problems will continue to only get worse after they are gone. Yes, in their final days the Bush Administration is making sure it protects fewer endangered species while opening up more federal lands to energy exploration. Meanwhile, in various federal agencies its senior executives are busy “burrowing in”, i.e. changing their status from political appointees to civil servants so they can hang around and attempt to bollix up the Obama agenda, all while drawing high salaries and having the benefit of civil service job protections.
The faults of this Administration are so numerous and egregious it is hard to know which ones to single out. I keep looking in vain for something I can say in favor of this administration. I am reduced to exactly one thing: the Bush Administration has dramatically boosted the money spent on antiretroviral drugs for those with HIV and AIDS in the third world, while also strong arming drug manufacturers to make these drugs available to the third world at just above cost. Naturally, Americans who came down with HIV or developed AIDS had to pay top dollar for their drugs. Maybe they should have moved to Africa, where they might have gotten the lifesaving drugs for little or nothing.
Republicans spent much of the last few years screaming at Senate Democrats for blocking so many appointments and judgeships. In retrospect though the Democrats showed great foresight. Bush came into office with a conservative agenda. Conservatives believe in smaller government. While smaller government eluded him as it did other recent Republican presidents (in fact, Bush made government much bigger), his sidekick Dick Cheney proved unusually adept at throwing monkey wrenches into the gears of government. The result is a government that while it costs much more, is now also far more dysfunctional than it ever has been. Some examples:
The Department of Housing and Urban Development spends much of its time trying to reduce Section 8 housing for the poor.
The Department of the Interior is busy opening pristine national lands to energy exploration.
The Department of Defense is overextended and our armed forces are exhausted. Our fancy military equipment has been squandered in the deserts of Iraq fighting the wrong missions.
By taunting North Korea and Iran, and labeling them as part of a bogus Axis of Evil, both countries have become more isolated and dangerous.
Our Department of Homeland Security could not even provide disaster relief to the residents of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, perhaps because the director of FEMA knew how to raise Arabian horses, not provide emergency services.
No one in control of our government saw the housing bubble coming because they were too busy trying to give Wall Street exactly what it wanted. In fact, through changes in the law our government encouraged the sort of behavior that exacerbated the crisis.
We added four trillion dollars to the national debt in eight years, which was at about six trillion when Bush took office.
We engaged in an embarrassing national folly in Iraq that even if President Obama can get us out within sixteen months will probably cost us a trillion dollars. The long-term care for veterans injured in the war will continue for decades. Meanwhile more than four thousand of our soldiers died in the conflict started to remove weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is about two thousand points below when Bush took office. Stocks now have approximately the same value they had in 1997. We have, in effect, wiped out all of the wealth that we accumulated in the last decade.
Our national infrastructure is in shambles. An interstate bridge collapse in Minnesota killed thirteen people while thousands of bridges that do need repair languish for lack of funds.
The rich have gotten much richer; the middle class has shrunk and have had their real earnings decline.
This administration spent much of the last eight years denying global warming was even occurring. After much hooting and jeering from scientists it finally agreed it was happening, but said it was part of a natural cycle so we should not do anything about it. Later, it agreed that we were part of the problem, but that we should do nothing more than set goals to reduce the problem. Meanwhile, environmental standards were regularly loosened.
We went to great length to limit research on embryonic stem cells, which in fact are not even alive unless implanted in a uterus and given some time to gestate, while taking extraordinary action to make sure the hulk of Terri Schiavo’s brain dead body stayed tethered to medical equipment for more than a decade.
Our brave servicemen and women who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan ended up with substandard care and spend much of their time dealing with a dysfunctional and understaffed medical bureaucracy.
The sad truth is that I could easily fill up ten pages or more with more examples like these and I would have hardly scratched the surface. It would be easy to say that this Administration was just inept, but the sad truth is they were inept when they were needed to be savvy and malicious and mendacious when they were not, answering only to themselves and tone deaf to anyone with a different opinion.
If any good is to come out of this, it is that the Republican Party has become a minority party with little likelihood of resurgence for at least a decade. In addition, social conservatism has backfired and neoconservatism has had a stake driven through its heart. It seems that with such sterling examples of what doesn’t work, we have a good idea what will: just do the opposite.
Meanwhile, all Americans are enveloped in a feeling of dread knowing that if any team can make things worse in just fifty-eight more days, the current boobs can and probably will. January 20th cannot come soon enough.
I was not worried about yesterday’s election outcome. When the economy tanked in mid September, it became abundantly clear to me than no Republican presidential candidate could beat this political headwind. The only question was the magnitude of Barack Obama’s win and how many other Democrats would be pulled in his wake. Given the circumstances, the Republicans in general did pretty well.
President Bush, a deeply unpopular president whose approval ratings were in the twenties, clearly dragged down the Republican brand. Republicans also carried an enormous set of baggage into this election. They were instrumental and wholly complicit in creating the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. It was somewhat karmic that it untimely reached the severely acute phase just six weeks before the election. Republicans had also embroiled the country in two foreign wars and dug us more than ten trillion dollars into debt. Because of their policies, most Americans have seen their real wages decrease. Virtually everyone who put money aside has watched the value of their portfolios drop precipitously. All of these stupid actions were entirely preventable had we elected pragmatic men and women instead of ideologues.
Yet, in spite of all these things, McCain lost by only six percentage points, which suggests his campaign was reasonably effective. Moreover, while Democrats made broad gains in the House and Senate, their gains were not as sweeping as pundits like me anticipated. There are five Democratic Senate pickups for sure, with four races still in dispute. At best only one of the four in dispute will tip toward the Democrats. Democrats will not have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Democratic House gains were relatively modest under the circumstances too. Democrats picked up 19 seats so far while eight other races remain in dispute.
Viewed over the last two years, the magnitude of our political change has been remarkable. Before the 2006 election, we had one party Republican government. In January 2009, we will have one party Democratic government. Republicans will still be able to block legislation in the Senate via filibuster but they do not control the agenda.
Still, thinking Republicans should feel shell-shocked. This election showed that the solid red South is crumbling. In an election or two, it might disappear altogether. Florida has always been somewhat iffy, but was decidedly peeled away. My state of Virginia, which has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, voted for Obama over McCain by five percent. North Carolina still has not been called, but if the current results stands, Obama should carry that state too. McCain is likely to hold on to Missouri, but just barely. While the current electoral count is now 349-163 for Obama, the final count is likely to be 364-174, a trouncing of nearly 200 electoral votes. Moreover, Republicans have no clear path back into power. New younger voters preferred Democrats by nearly a factor of two to one. Their best hope for returning to power is simply to hope that Democrats governed like buffoons too. When the Republican Party eventually is voted back into power, it should look substantially different from the current party.
While for me the outcome was never in doubt, I felt euphoric nonetheless when it arrived. I felt happiest for my African American brethren, most of whom assumed they would never live to see an African American elected President of the United States. The scenes on TV of so many African Americans crying in joy after the networks called the election for Obama were poignant, heartfelt, wondrously joyful and oh so heartfelt, as was Obama’s masterful victory speech. As a metaphor, the election of Barack Obama works well on so many levels. For the last eight years, America has projected itself as an insular, unreasonable, mean and dogmatic nation. Last night I saw reemerge the America I knew growing up. With Obama’s election, racism in our country was dealt a fatal blow and African Americans realized they too were fully enfranchised citizen not just in law, but in fact. A new and better America has emerged that is more tolerant, generous and inclusive than the America of the 20th century. In the 21st century, real America is not rural American, but is colorfully multi-hued, as reflect by its new president elect.
It remains to be seen whether through sheer force of personality President Obama can truly unite us. Unquestionably, he inherits problems of a magnitude not seen in more than a generation. Yet, since we must move through these times anyhow, we are blessed with one of the few leaders up to the job of leading us safely through this treacherous minefield.
For many of us older Americans, the end of the Bush Administration feels like the moments after Watergate’s sad denouement. We remember a sense of relief and a feeling of national shame as we watched the presidential helicopter carry away a disgraced President Nixon. When President Ford told us that our long national nightmare was over, we cried in relief (but not in joy) and wondered if our nation would really remain true to its ideals.
The sad truth for those of us who lived through the Nixon years is that these last eight years have been far worse. Back then we were not numb to the implications of Nixon’s unconstitutional and unlawful actions. Yet President Nixon was at least held accountable by Congress. This congress has given this administration a pass for its crimes. Just to make sure no one is held accountable, President Bush is likely to offer pardons to all the usual suspects. Over these last eight years, we have repeatedly witnessed egregious and previously unthinkable crimes by our government, executed in a premeditated and matter of fact manner by our insular and headstrong leaders. We have seen our nation engage in torture. We have watched our president blithely ignore laws he found it inconvenient by issuing signing statements that he embodied with the force of law. Our armies have inflicted mass suffering on Iraqis by the millions. In doing so, we inherited a staggering karmic debt that will take generations of good deeds to repay. We have spent like a drunken sailor, mortgaged our future and nearly kicked off another Great Depression, bringing the whole world with us. We have witnessed ideology wholly divorced from reality and suffered its disastrous consequences.
My euphoria last night, like that of many Americans, came from the realization that our constitution still works in a creaky sort of way. Sadly, due to our spineless Congress, it did not work through our system of checks and balances, but in a delayed manner through our electoral system. Yet we finally did emerge from our fear-induced stupor and by electing Barack Obama took the critical step necessary to put the nation aright again. In seventy-six days, for the first time in eight years we will have a president that actually puts the rule of law and our constitution first. Imagine that! In seventy-six days, the lunatics will be formally kicked out of the asylum and the grownups will be back in charge.
Why is it so hard to find your friends Wall in Facebook? "Friends" link merely takes you to a page to help you find more friends. Bizarre.02:27:53 AM August 28, 2010from Echofon
Prediction: Scott Brown will find it convenient to turn Democrat or Independent before he faces reelection. He's becoming a moderate.12:57:21 AM August 18, 2010from Echofon
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