I Am Totally Stealing This!!!

 . . . from Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly.


Apparently, while up in New Hampshire today, Herman Cain attempted to defend his foreign policy incoherence by telling an AP reporter that knowing every detail isn't important, adding:  "We need a leader, not a reader."

To which I can only reply, "The Simpsons Did it First!":

Awesome!

GOP Admits to Putting Party Over Country

I’ve claimed many time before that - as a general rule – the Democractic party is actually interested in governing the country, in that by and large its members want to enact policies that can actually help the American people. 

I’ve also claimed that – as a general rule – the Republican party isn’t really interested in governing so much as it is interested in acquring political power for power's sake.  If these two interests conflict, the Republicans are much more likely to do whatever they think will help them electorally even if that course of action hurts America itself.  Certainly Mike Lofgren’s recent article bears out this general characterization.

And then today, via Steve Benen (again) over at The Washington Monthly, we have this:

And despite public declarations about finding common ground with Obama, some Republicans are privately grumbling that their leaders are being too accommodating with the president.

“Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?” said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely.

For all of the debate over what motivates Republicans on Capitol Hill, could this quote be any clearer? GOP goals have nothing to do with boosting the economy or creating jobs, and everything to do with undermining the president during a crisis.

The correct answer to this aide’s question — Americans get back to work is more important than partisan politics — never seems to enter the picture.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), chairman of the NRCC, added that no one should assume congressional Republicans will support policies, just because “we’ve been for them” in the recent past.

No, of course not. (emphasis added).

It is difficult to convince a political opponent to do the right thing when your opponent’s entire worldview is filtered not through the lens of appropriate social or economic policy, and instead through the lens of sheer political calculation.  When the only question asked by Republicans is ‘How can we best hurt Obama?’ the President’s ability to suggest anything that might help jump start the economy pretty much goes out the window.

Fox Viewers Are Not Confused

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly had a quick post up yesterday (completely with video clip and everything) pointing out that just a few weeks ago, when Conservatives were downplaying the threat involved in downgrading the nation’s credit rating, you could find people like Neil Cavuto, Fox’s vice president of business news, saying things like “I would welcome a downgrade.  I really would.  I think it would be the pain from which we have a gain.”  And yet now that Standard & Poor has in fact downgraded the U.S. debt Fox is telling its viewers that this “is a tragedy that must be blamed on the White House.”  Benen concludes with the observation that “[t]here’s a good reason Fox viewers seem so confused so often.”

Benen’s conclusion is correct, of course, but only because it includes the word “seem.”  Fox viewers seem confused to people in the Reality-based community, but the fact remains that they are not confused at all.  Not if you define “confused” as I do, to mean “uncertain, unsure or puzzled.”  I live in a red part of a Red State, and there are plenty of loyal Fox News viewers around here.  Something you cannot call these people is “uncertain, unsure or puzzled.”  At any given time they have an understanding of their world that is breathtaking for its clarity, and a commitment to that understanding that brooks no doubt or indecision.  The only reason their understanding “seems confused” to people in the Reality-based community is because that understanding changes constantly and fluidly as necessary to adapt to whatever change in circumstances presents itself.

America Has Defaulted Before. Sort of.

Norm Ornstein has a new article up at Foreign Policy titled: "Worst. Congress. Ever." (H/t, again, to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly) In it, Ornstein reviews how the GOP's extreme partisan ideology has hamstrung the 112th Congress so as to prevent even the simplest and most necessary acts from being accomplished:

[L]ook what we have now: a long-term debt disaster with viable bipartisan solutions on the table but ignored or cast aside in Congress; an impasse of the usually perfunctory matter of raising the statutory debt limit placing the United States in jeopardy of its first ever default . . . (emphasis added).

You see statements like this again and again when reading articles about the debt ceiling: that if the debt ceiling isn't raised the United States will default on its debt obligations for "the first time ever." Except that statement isn't really true. In fact, our country pretty much began by defaulting on its debts.

The Story of Who We Are

Via Steve Benen over at Political Animal I see that the White House has been circulating a video of President Obama speaking with some college students in Massachusetts. In trying to explain the nature of politics to them, Obama said the following:

[O]ne of the challenges of this generation is, I think, to understand that the nature of our democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political process. That means you don't get 100% of what you want. You don't get it if you are the majority; you don't get it if you are in the minority. And you can be an honorable [person] in politics understanding that you are not going to get 100% of what you want.

One of the reasons I like this statement is because it implicitly clarifies the respective, and different, roles that are supposed to be played by politicians and advocates. The mere fact that you can never get 100% of what you want doesn't mean that you stop advocating for it. It just means that you have to recognize that -- in any particular political battle -- you won't realize it.

And that is fine. It is the job of the politician to compromise with the other side and obtain for you the most he can get that you want, whilst giving up the least that you are willing to sacrifice. But it is the job of us, the advocates, to continue to press for our desires and try and re-work our society to make it better fit the image we have of what it should be.

Above all, it is our job to try and remember that what we call "the political process" is precisely that: a process. It is always ongoing, it is always changing, it is always evolving. It never, ever stops.

Arguing with each other over societal policies and prescriptions is nothing less than the never-ending story we tell each other about who and what we are as a people. And if you want your narrative to carry the day, you can't stop talking.