Presidential Politics
Ross Douthat writes:
When people pine for third parties, they usually have a fantasy presidential candidate in mind — a Colin Powell or a Michael Bloomberg, riding in to save us from partisanship and corruption.
But presidential elections are the place where the two-party system seems more necessary than ever. The office of the presidency has become so potent and so polarizing — part priest-king, part ritual scapegoat — that chief executives need to represent the broadest possible coalition to have any chance of success.
I submit that the best recent presidential leadership we’ve experienced came when Bill Clinton’s presidency was weakened by scandal and the Newt Gingrich orchestrated takeover of Congress — whereas the era of unified Republican government under George W. Bush and unified Democratic government under Barack Obama are turning out to be far worse for the country.
Were a Colin Powell or a Michael Bloomberg elected president I don’t know how they’d fare — perhaps the times I’ve cited are merely evidence in favor of divided government — but I’d rather risk an independent POTUS not getting very much done than see a president with a large, supportive coalition in Congress rapidly implementing lots of ill-conceived policies.
Here’s a perfect example of where you fail to have perspective in the way that I accuse you of, and it has nothing to do with just scoring points, and everything to do with having the sort of appreciation for the current situation that will inform future political decisions. You have here compared the Bush and Obama administrations directly and pronounced both bad for the country, without taking the time to note that whatever you think about the first ten months of the Obama administration, there is no rational set of standards by which it is anything like as bad for the country as the Bush administration. I can’t imagine an adult that would imagine that was the case.
And that matters, not in the way that you constantly misrepresent my position, but in the fact that past performance has to influence future decisions. When you act as though a presidency that has so far been marked by partisan gridlock is anything like on the same order with a presidency that saw the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history, the legalization of torture and warrantless spying on Americans, a city being swallowed by the sea and not being helped by the federal government, federal prosecutors fired for not conducting absurd and politicized prosecutions, cronyism taken the very threshold of the Supreme Court, and on and on and on— when you fail to point out that one administration is nothing like the other, it ensures that you will not have an accurate assessment of what the best course forward is for this country. You elide my complaints so quickly because you think, like a lot of conservatives, that the Bush administration is just some weird outlier that has nothing to say about conservative policy positions. That’s a convenient position for an ideology and party to take when they have been responsible for the most comprehensive administrative failure in at least a century, but it is not one that is ultimately good for the country or the ideology. It really might be the case that some of the Bush administration’s failures show not the incompetence of George Bush and his cronies but fundamental failures in conservative ideas.
As I keep saying, the point is not just “Bush was worse.” The point is that when you have lowered the expectations for one of the two major political parties so much that you suggest that both Bush and Obama simply deserve to be labeled a failure, you are endangering the country. When you allow the Republicans to play in the Special Olympics of American politics you are pushing this country, cyclical as its politics are, towards the control of a party that has to rise to no standards.
You want credit for going after movement types and radio goons, but you don’t seem to consider that perhaps Rush Limbaugh isn’t just full of shit, but that perhaps his ideas are full of shit as well.
And you’re ignoring the fact that this politics-of-gridlock you are advocating defaults to the conservative position. Because American conservatism is a vehicle for privileging and supporting the status quo, making sure that the already powerful and wealthy stay so at the expense of people who are trying to improve the material conditions of their lives— like, say, through overhauling our bankrupt clusterfuck of a health care system— it is to conservatism’s benefit to make change impossible. That’s not some moderate ideal, it’s a win for everyone who wants the haves and have-nots to remain right where they are.
— Freddie · Nov 2, 06:12 PM · #
Freddie, I don’t think that insulting your opponents as somehow not “adult” is a particularly helpful gambit. I can’t imagine any intelligible objective (i.e., an objective other than spewing vitriol for its own sake) that is advanced by that sort of rhetoric.
So, just for the record, here is one 51-year-old with a doctorate, a house, a wife and children, a six-figure job, and all the other accoutrements of adulthood, who would be happy to defend the proposition that the Obama administration is shaping up to be far more destructive of our liberties, our economy, our international standing, and our nationhood than the Bush administration was.
— y81 · Nov 2, 06:35 PM · #
I think an independent president is exactly what we need, preferably one that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I know we won’t have a staunch libertarian president, but I sure would like to see one who understands the importance of limited government and individual rights, and is not tied to either party..
— mike farmer · Nov 2, 06:38 PM · #
We’re going to have to disagree on liberty, economy and nationhood, y81, but I am really curious to know how Obama is hurting our international standing compared to George Bush.
I know we won’t have a staunch libertarian president, but I sure would like to see one who understands the importance of limited government and individual rights, and is not tied to either party.
As smarter people than me have pointed out, the problem is that no president is going to curtail presidential power. People don’t audit themselves, not really, and no amount of principle is likely to change that. Curbing the power of the presidency has to come from outside the office, I think.
— Freddie · Nov 2, 06:39 PM · #
Ah, but Freddie, the “neg” doesn’t work on adult males. I’m not going to have a discussion with someone who starts things off with an insult.
— y81 · Nov 2, 07:48 PM · #
I’m not going to have a discussion with someone who starts things off with an insult.
You realize that this is an ironic thing to be scolding me for, in this combox, right?
— Freddie · Nov 2, 07:55 PM · #
Freddie,
I don’t have as cynical an outlook as you, and those smarter than you — I believe that at some point it will get so bad that good men and women arise who act on principle. It’s happened before — it can happen again.
But, in a way, we’re both right — the external influence will be citizens who finally decide to change washington D.C. and elect a principled president who has no interest in power, just serving the nation.
It might take a lot more damage and pain before it happens, but I think the change is underway.
— mike farmer · Nov 2, 08:01 PM · #
Freddie,
Your response here is, to put it politely, overheated. One offending sentence from Conor generates a comment larger than the original post itself.
All that was said here is that all repub GWB and all dem BHO are going to turn out worse for the country that mixed government. Any statement that BHO and GWB were the same, as bad, etc., is the product of your imagination.
Your larger proposition seems to be that every mention of GWB, every time his administration is compared to another, requires a ritualized denunciation and the donning of sackcloth and ashes by anyone who ever voted for the GOP or supported any of GWB’s initiatives. This is not a reasonable, nor an ‘adult’, request.
— Ben A · Nov 2, 08:14 PM · #
Freddie is just matoko_chan with better sentence structure.
— BrianF · Nov 2, 08:37 PM · #
I think it is pretty agreeable, except for perhaps that odd 20% of the nation, that GWB’s unopposed administration was indeed far worse for the country than the mixed control Clinton or Reagan admins. I think you’re jumping the gun lumping Obama into that mix. To carry his water a bit we’re only 10 months in, he inherited about as big a mess as one could imagine an incoming President to deal with and has taken an ambitious agenda to boot. I would say right now that the overall returns on voter investment in him are a push, perhaps with a slight lean to the positive given recent economic data. All the same, let’s set aside our desire to be part of the 24/7 news maelstrom and wait for at least 24 months to declare any Presidency the worst of anything.
— RIRedinPA · Nov 2, 08:42 PM · #
But that’s not what Conor said at all:
“Are turning out”, not “will turn out.” The equivalence is plainly stated, not a figment of Freddie’s imagination. And it’s objectively false.
— Chet · Nov 2, 10:01 PM · #
<i>Freddie is just matoko_chan with better sentence structure.</i>
Not even close. Lets be careful with the insults, OK?
— Adam Greenwood · Nov 3, 02:23 AM · #
Dear Lord, someone must’ve taken Freddie’s milk money again. FWIW — and it pains me to say this — I suspect in the long term GWB’s foreign policy will be regarded as better than either of the flanking presidents (and in fact quite good), but not because of the Middle East, which was a disaster. But that’s just one goofy guess.
What Conor’s saying is annoying, though: Clinton/Gingrich was only “better fot the country” from a certain lower-spedning-above-all-else standpoint that I frankly don’t think even Conor beleives. Yeah: under Clinton/Gingrich no real legislation went anywhere except for a welfare reform that I and much of the left hated, and spending got curtailed. Whoopee. If you see that as super great government — letting a lot of other stuff fester — then it’s not 100% clear to me why you mind Obama’s running up future debt.
I’d argue that in terms of Presdiential effectiveness and good-for-America governance the first two years of Clinton might have been better than the last six, and in an instructive way. Those years tend to get short shrift because of the failure of health-care reform and some incredible foreign poilicy bungling (read: Cedras). But the DLC was still ascendant — I think McGurdy’s defenestration was in ’94? — and important policy got pushed.
Probably the most important and far ranging was the establishment of NAFTA and of the Uruguay GATT round. Those were policies Bush had set up, but probably didn’t have a prayer of ramming through Congress. Clinton had both a partisan advantage and, frankly, just a lot of political muscle. He rammed that thing through even when Perot-ism was at its height and his own part was leery (and dispatched Gore to take care of Perot). So from that perspective even the libertarians should like Cinton’s opener.
If Obama ramps up forces in Afghanistan (not that that’s as clearly good policy), something similar will be in effect: the transition, and the campaigning of both Kerry and Obama, have forced Democrats to own Republican policy.
So maybe what is helpful isn’t divided government, but government in transition, where parties inherit each other’s policy and have to adapt, get to pick and choose among good outcomes. Active and strong third parties would probably help that come about more.
— Sanjay · Nov 3, 03:26 PM · #
Lets be careful with the insults, OK?
Hey, why start now.
— Freddie · Nov 3, 03:54 PM · #
Hey, knee-jerk insult aside, Sanjay agrees with me!
— Freddie · Nov 3, 04:07 PM · #
Freddie, not that there’s any sin in agreeing with you — Chet’s the stupid one — but, again with the pussified posting. I expressed the following ideas in that comment:
- Bush’s foreign policy was in general good, and better than Obama’s or Clinton’s.
- Clinton/Gingrich was only great government if, by great government, you mean government that doesn’t introduce new spending.
- Clinton’s first years involved some remarkable policies, most notably the passage of (Bush-designed) sweeping trade legislation which had a huge impact (and was, I think, really very good for America).
- That might exemplify that good governance comes not from split government but from interpatry turnover, and Obama may rely on something similar in Afghanistan.
- You write like someone beat you up and took your milk money (presumably for her American Girl tea party fund).
I can’t find you making a single one of those points anywhere above with which I might agree or disagree. I can’t even see you suggesting any of those ideas. I just see a classic pointless Freddie meltdown over GWB. It’s sort of unsettling to discover that you think you may have expressed one or more of those ideas above with which to be agreed or disagreed. You’re entering the Chet zone.
— Sanjay · Nov 3, 05:00 PM · #
I don’t know, it’s always been my experience that people who talk about toughness— particularly on the Internet— are people who have never been in a fight in their lives. You just strike me as the kind of person who is so desperate to telegraph toughness that it demonstrates that you probably walk around in fear of being physically abused. You radiate it.
— Freddie · Nov 3, 05:08 PM · #
Freddie — meaning, you didn’t make any of those points, right?
FWIW, I think your experience about “tough talk” is wrong in real life, and possibly but I wouldn’t know right on the Internet. But, can you find me talking trash about some of the very very bad shit I’ve been around or the hordes I’ve beaten up (for just this one time: there’s been a bit of both, and, weirdly given how I thought life was going, a bit of a resurgence of that lately, but I live in the South now), or how I can beat the crap out of you, or any of that shit. Can’t find that either, can you? It’s like your squealing over Ivy League better-than-thou-ism.
Which, if you’re listening, should make you stop, think, and recalibrate. And you should be listening. You’re not the dumb one, remember? But you write from such a reflexive pussydom that it pushes you into abysmally dumb places.
That’s the closest I get to friendly advice.
— Sanjay · Nov 3, 05:23 PM · #
No, I think I’m right, actually. I mean, who knows— I know as little about you as you do about me. But I read you, and I listen what you say and how you express things and how you constantly bring up these weird criticisms based on some strained idea of “internet toughness,” and what I think is that you are one of those men who walks down the street knowing that every other man who sees him looks at him and decides that he represents no physical threat. Now, on any intellectual level, who cares, right. But on an emotional level, I think that must be a pretty terrible lack of male privilege, walking around knowing people are seeing you and thinking very little of your physical prowess. To be emasculated like that, just by being seen— that must be hard to take.
— Freddie · Nov 3, 05:29 PM · #
But Freddie, don’t you know – Sanjay has a Ph.D. in Toughness.
— Chet · Nov 3, 07:02 PM · #
Always the same, Freddie. You say something abysmally stupid — in this case, that I “agreed with” you — can’t defend it, decide not to, and make a pathetic, sobby attempt to recoup. Are you so deluded that you think that that works?
— Sanjay · Nov 4, 02:55 PM · #