Bipartisanship Under Obama

(As always, this post can also be found at www.timetokeepscore.com. You're invited to post your comments there as well as you'll probably get a bit more feedback and interplay there.)

I've been vexed of late as to whether GOP leadership will merely slide into the role that the Dems held under Bush, whether they will sell out their conservative heritage and just be "softly" liberal, or whether they will push conservative solutions that are viable alternatives to some of Obama's more frighteningly liberal agenda.

Mickey Edwards, a player in the Reagan administration and co-founded the Heritage Foundation (conservative think-tank), wrote a very interesting op-ed piece in the L.A. Times this week in which he stated:

If proposals seem unworkable or unwise (if they do not contain provisions for taxpayers to recoup their investment; if they do not allow for taxpayers, as de facto shareholders, to insist on sound management practices; if they would allow government officials to make production and pricing decisions), conservatives have a responsibility to resist. But they also have an obligation to propose alternative solutions. It is government's job -- Reagan again -- to provide opportunity and foster productivity. With the nation in financial collapse, nothing is more imprudent -- more antithetical to true conservatism -- than to do nothing.

I maintain that "doing nothing" is exactly what the Dems did as a minority and then a majority during the problems of the Bush era. If the GOP wants to be a relevant player, it needs to eschew that tendency. And President Obama, with all his talk of unity and inclusion, needs to publicly and quickly take Dem leaders to the woodshed for any inkling of taunting, exclusion, and pettiness.

Republicans would be wise to distance themselves from platforms that are,

anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism's worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation's public affairs.

Further,

They [must cease] to worship small government and [turn] their backs on limited government. They have turned to a politics of exclusion, division and nastiness. Today, they wonder what went wrong, why Americans have turned on them, why they lose, or barely win, even in places such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

The fact is, President Obama has as much potential to support conservative solutions as he does liberal ones. He's a family man, he's religious, he's a self-made man, he has stated that he opposes same-sex marriages (though he's been a bit confusing on that one), and the liberal voting base of the poor, the minorities, etc. will be just as likely to embrace conservative solutions as they are liberal ones, as long as they are solutions.

I believe that those solutions exist. What I'm frustrated with is GOP leadership's lack of ability to push those forward.

Rise Up, O Legislative Branch

So Ms. Pelosi is excited to finally be able to get to work now that the "10 pound anvil" of Bush's presidency was removed from her head via Marine One.

Well good for her. I'm relieved too, the poor thing. She's been saddled with one of the most unpopular presidents in history, nothing but battles to win, and a friendly majority in both houses with which to win them and potential to expand that majority for the past two Congressional terms. What a tough environment in which "arguably the second most powerful person in Washington" can effectively shape the course of what should be the most influential policy-making governmental branch out of the three. Please.

A significant-yet-oft overlooked danger to good governance is the tyranny of the executive over the legislative. Presidential power (and by extension that of the executive generally) has quietly expanded steadily, most notably since the New Deal. And yet, in Congress there is opportunity for strong leadership to check that executive**, even when the parties are friendly to each other.

When Congress merely waits for a friendly President to aggressively push an agenda, the legislature becomes a mere extension of the administrative state, a means to an end, and fails to truly be the representative branch of government that it ought to be. Even from within the same party, the two branches are designed to have fundamentally different agendas, and the pursuit of those agendas and the resulting conflict should theoretically provide for some of the best policy allowed for under the Constitution.

I submit that President Bush's 'failed policies' should be attributed no less to an acquiescent friendly Congress during the earlier years of his presidency and a spineless, whiny, complaining Congress during the later years. I shudder to think of what kinds of trouble a majority of yes men (and yes women) will get us into during the first two years of Obama's presidency.

**Democrats held a majority in Congress during much of the Republican-dominated presidencies of the 70s and 80s, with House Speakers Carl Albert and Tip O'Neill serving opposite Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. Republican Newt Gingrich was a powerful opponent of Bill Clinton during the 90s. In the Senate, Senator LBJ was notably a very strong driver of policy which made him a logical second to JFK.

Please check out what my fellow participants at www.timetokeepscore.com may have to say about this and other issues.

God Bless OUr President

He needs it. Look at the toll a presidency can take on a man.

Dubya, 2000



Dubya, 2008



Slick Willy, 1992



Slick Willy, 2000



Bush Senior, 1988



Bush Senior, 1992



Ronnie, 1980



Ronnie, 1988 (granted, he started out pretty old and has the benefit of quite a bit of hair dye, but still...)



Mr. Lincoln, circa 1860



Mr. Lincoln, 1864 (tough to tell with the black and white, but he aged significantly during his four years)

Post-Racist America?

It recently came to my attention that I may have a reader or two out there. Thank you. :) I've been quiet of late mostly because of finals and travel, but also because I've been invited to contribute to another blog, www.timetokeepscore.com.

So, I'll post to both blogs concurrently until I figure out how else to handle these things.

Here's my most recent post from Time to Keep Score:

I'd like to ask the question, what is the true current state of racial affairs in America today? The question isn't a particularly easy one as metrics are difficult to come by, but I was intrigued by both a recent L.A. Times article (from the left) and your usual brand of right-wing-radio crackpot suggesting that the State of Race Relations in the Union is much stronger than is commonly believed.

It took moving to Texas as a kid to gain some level of understanding of how "the rest of the country" operates racially. Growing up in a fairly diverse yet economically strong area in Southern California, my racial viewpoint was shaped by a school experience with no strong racial majority and few socio-economic divisions. Even witnessing some of what the South has to offer to the racial outlook of the country, I've always had a skepticism towards the state of racial relations.

President Obama's election certainly has shown to the world that an individual who is not a WASP can be elected to one of the highest seats of power in the world. I've heard of polling data (sorry for no citation, I'll work on that) suggesting that 95% of Republicans would have gladly voted for a black person to be President if that person happened to have been a Republican also.

So are we living in a Post-Racist America? Are the problems related to race largely perpetuated and exaggerated by those with an agenda for doing so? (I'm talking to you, Jesse and Al.) I honestly can't say, but I suspect that, for the most part, White America on the racial side and Prosperous America on the economic side are more than happy to leave the door open for Minority or Poor America to enter in. And I hope they do.