The GOP was once frustrated and despondent. Bill Clinton had beaten them at every turn. They had launched a prolonged and divisive campaign to impeach him – and failed. Despite attempts to thwart his legislation initiatives, he was quite popular. When the national news seemed good, he got the credit. When the news seemed bad, the Republican Congress was blamed.
As Clinton prepared to leave office, the GOP faced a hard choice: attempt to defeat one of the most popular Democratic presidents in history, or just put up a good show? I have always believed that the GOP chose the latter. The serious contender at the time was Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida. George W. Bush was less well known, except for his spectacular business failures. I have always believed that the GOP pulled out all the campaigning stops as a type of experiment, to see what would work and what wouldn’t.
With six years of hindsight, I’ve decided that I was partially right and partially wrong. Most of us would call GWB, his administration, or both, incompetent. The GOP ran with the weaker candidate not as an experiment electoral politics, but as an experiment in planned obsolencence.
(George Lakoff has written a looooong editorial touching on this subject. I agree on the basic facts but disagree elsewhere.)
Neo-cons, such as Grover Norquist, have for years been espousing the “starve-the-beast” theory of government for decades– namely, that the Federal government should patrol the seas and deliver the mail, nothing else. They believe that the citizenry should not rely on their government to solve their problems, not even to help in many cases.
Who in their right mind would trust FEMA now? How many of us couldn’t get vaccines or took a defective drug because the FDA was sleeping at the wheel? How many women have been harmed because the FDA was beholden to religious conservatives instead of health concerns? How many of our kids are studying for some idiotic standardized test instead of actually learning in school? What veteran trusts the VA with their personal data? Just how many personal data “events” have there been? Now that we know that the Government spies on our phone calls, e-mails, and bank records, then loses what they steal, how much faith do we place in any Federal agency?
As Lakoff asserts, this is a stunning success for the conservative movement. No matter who we elect as the next President, nor the next 4 or 5 Presidents, American faith in the very institution of government has been harmed. This is where Lakoff and I part ways.
This planned incompetence and another initiative point to something the Left lacks: seriously long-range thinking. The other initiative is a Constitutional Convention, called by supporters of a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
If the rabid (and well-funded) conservatives can rally 2/3 of the State Legislatures to demand an Amendment, Congress must call for a Convention as specified in Article V. However, this opens the entire Constitution up to amendment. Everything, literally everything, would be up for grabs: states’ rights, the existence of states, voting rights, 3 branch government, Bill of rights, the very definition of citizen – all the basic laws that underpin the other laws we depend on.
Do I think that will happen? Five years ago, I would have said ‘don’t be silly’. I would have also said that there was no way that I’d be called un-American because I don’t support torture and I do support immigration. I would have said that any so-called pundit who gets on television and attacked 9/11 widows would be run out of town. I would have said no President, no matter how conservative, would be able to cut taxes during a war. This country has changed and I won’t make a prediction either way. What I will predict is that the conservative movement has moved America into a government of planned obsolescence. I don’t think we’ve seen everything yet.