|
Twilight of the
Goofs
When the
election is over and the dust settles and Barack Obama begins to
choose his cabinet members while Republican congressmen and
senators clean out their offices, pundits and short-term
historians will ponder what happened to the Republican majority
and its dominance of all three branches of government.
The Republicans
were cocky and arrogant, but that’s not a failing in politics
any more than it is in professional sports. To the winners go
the spoils, and one of the spoils is enjoying dominating the
opposition. For a quarter of a century the Republicans enjoyed
it and thought the party would go on forever. It seemed like a
matter of time until a monarchical presidency would trump the
legislature and courts, ruling by fiat, that women would forever
lose the right to choose whether to bear a child, that
minorities would be consigned to isolation, that social programs
would die while the military thrived, and the American media
establishment would become an arm of the executive branch of
government. The Republican vision of wealthy white males
dominating the social and political landscape forever was close,
so close that they could nearly touch it, and the American
military would invade and occupy foreign nations with impunity.
What happened to this vision of neo-con heaven?
The answer,
really, is alarmingly simple: it was goofy. More than that, it
was fundamentally un-American. The neo-con vision, which has
driven American politics under the failed presidency of George
W. Bush, is not an American vision. Basic American principles
like thrift, fair play, and honesty were not in the recipe.
Lincoln pointed out a long time ago that you can’t fool all of
the American people all of the time. Republicans were too busy
shopping for Lincolns to understand Lincoln.
Americans might
not be the best educated population in the world these days, and
we might find new and creative ways to disagree with each other,
but we can still spot a phony. This is why John McCain’s
candidacy will end dismally. His authenticity disappeared when
he planted lip prints on Gerry Falwell’s behind. And when he
changed his mind about torture. And when he changed his mind
about tax policy. And when he can’t distinguish between Sunnis
and Shi’ites, or when his spouse criticizes Michelle Obama for
stating that it took a while for her to feel genuinely proud of
this county when McCain himself has stated several times that he
didn’t love his country until he was a prisoner of war and
finally saw the light. Most of us don’t need to be imprisoned
in a foreign nation to love our country. We get there
naturally. He didn’t. Joe Lieberman can whisper in his ears a
thousand times and that reality won’t go away. Lieberman might
as well be whispering sweet nothings, because that’s what the
voters will give McCain in November. A whole lot of nothing.
It only takes
one albatross to sink a candidate, and McCain has at least two.
One is Iraq. Eight out of ten Americans realize the Iraq
invasion and occupation was a horrendous mistake, and a lot of
them are particularly angry because they trusted Bush and
McCain. They gave them the benefit of the doubt. And they gave
their sons and daughters, their spouses, their parents. They
are the angriest voters of all, and if McCain thinks he can get
them back, he’s wrong. They might not vote for Obama, but they
sure as hell won’t vote for an irresponsible war-monger.
The other
albatross is oil, and McCain’s attempt to blame the Democrats
for rising gasoline prices because they won’t give the oil
companies more leases to lie fallow is laughable. There are
millions of acres of available land for exploration and a wealth
of oil in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Alaskan shore that are
available. Oil companies are working fewer than a quarter of
the leases they already have, but they still insist on the right
to mine the waters off New Jersey, California, and Florida. The
Republicans think they have a winning issue. The Democrats are
saying, “Thanks for Florida.”
This election
is not just about a tired old warrior who has worn out his
welcome against a superstar. It’s about a tired old scheme for
political dominance in defiance of everything that Americans
value against a rising tide of resentment over the con job of
the Bush Presidency and, before that, the fraudulent
“conservative” movement that actually meant higher deficits, a
new Gilded Age, and an erosion of liberty. Either Obama or
Clinton would have ridden that wave. Obama gets the ride
because he won the delegates. That was the hard part. The
general election is a given.
© June 19, 2008
by Mike Tully |
Mike has been writing a regular column on
Inside Track
Online since July 1, 2003. |
