We made the wrong choice

This is probably true much more often than we admit. I won't go into all the personal mistaken choices because their consequences are limited. But in politics, it's definitely worth talking about.

A slogan for this election is that IT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF THIS GENERATION. (Note, there's now a lot of pushback against that idea, thank God.) When a lot of people were screaming that during the GOP primary, I considered the question seriously, and decided that the most important election of this generation was in 2000 (Bush vs. Gore). Unfortunately, we got the wrong one. I'll argue that with anyone, and the sane ones will be agreeing in about ... 2 minutes, or a lot less. As I don't want to waste my efforts on the insane ones, I don't have the argument very often.

So, we made the wrong choice in 2000. Actually, the popular vote favored Gore, but not enough to swing the electoral college in basically a 48%-to-48% tie.

Another wrong choice preceded that. The GOP establishment chose the wrong Bush brother. Jeb Bush was generally acknowledged to be the smarter and more serious one. But George Bush managed to block him out and sign up a lot of early supporters. Or perhaps I should give in to my speculation and say Karl Rove did these things.

(Side note: After Karen Hughes' statement that George Bush was intelligent, I withheld judgment for at least two years. Never in that time did I see signs of above-average intelligence from Geroge Bush. So when I say that he's not intelligent, or that he's an idiot, it's based on observation, not on bias. I'd trust him to deliver mail or teach high school or build web pages, but he wasn't smart enough to be POTUS.)

Why did we end up with the dumber Bush brother? Well, if you were a conservative businessman and you wanted someone malleable rather than independent, wouldn't you choose George over Jeb? Now, I live about as far from Texas as an American can, so I have no idea who are the powers behind the Texas GOP, but there's a track record there of not-so-bright governors, as Rick Perry reminded us. Someone, maybe more than one, maybe a group decision, chose George Bush as Republican nominee in 2000. Whoever you are, THANKS A LOT FOR SUCH A SHITTY CHOICE.

Photo: timesunion.com

Extra: The occasion for this post is Jeb Bush's announcement that he'd accept 10-1 spending cuts to tax increases. What a RINO.

Reflections on partisanship

Partisanship is more the norm, but bipartisanship also has a robust history. I was asking myself the question: is it really worse now than it was in the past? Yes, I think so. In the past 3 years, Congress has negotiated virtually no bills. A few measures have been so popular that they passed easily, most recently a jobs bill for veterans, but that it isn't the hard work of negotiating a compromise. All the compromises in the past year have occurred as time ticked down to a shutdown or a hard expiration date.

A welfare reform bill or education bill worked on by both Bush and Kennedy would be unthinkable today. There had been camaraderie among senators in past years, but not now.

Not So Small Beginnings

I tried to think back to when this nearly constant animosity started, and I think it was during Reagan presidency. There won't be any proof of this, but I think there was a near constant barrage of disagreement and belittling critique of the man, his intelligence, and his policies. It wasn't surprising, because Reagan was an existential threat to the liberal-leaning status quo. He wanted to roll back a scary number of the gains liberal had made: welfare, abortion, tax-free student loans, decreased military spending, women's liberation.

One of the most blatant of the liberals' attacks was on Robert Bork, Reagan's nominee to the Supreme Court. Republican neither forgave or forgot, and Supreme Court nominations have been generally been contentious ever since. (To be clear, I agreed with the fight against Bork. He was a frighteningly persuasive reactionary, and I don't use those terms lightly.)

 "I'll see you and raise you five."

This form of partisanship, with constant attacks, became even more pronounced during the Clinton administration. The tools--congregational hearings, constant news leaks, rumors, special prosecutors (blessedly defunct now)--had all been used before by Democrats out to embarrass a Republican administration. Perhaps the Republicans added a few new tricks, such as finding PACs or think-tanks that would  financially sponsor accusers on press junkets (though it's possible that wasn't a new twist).

The Republicans really upped the ante with their impeachment proceeding against Bill Clinton. Even a strong electoral repudiation of the Republicans didn't deter the House Republican leadership, who commenced impeachment proceeding after losing a significant number of seats in the 1998 off-year election. Since then, the partisanship has barely had even a Christmas truce, except perhaps Gore's altruistic concession of the disputed 2000 presidential election. Each president has been accused so often of being "the most polarizing figure ever" that it could be a title equivalent with 'Mr. President.' I'm so tired and cynical about all this partisanship that I don't want to chronicle any more of it in this post. Suffice to say that it continues unabated.

I don't have a hopeful note to end on. No pithy quip. I still pray for an end to this partisanship, but without any spirit of hopefulness. Sorry to be such a downer.

 ... just another day at the beach

Extras
Google counts:

• "Impeach Carter"   - 5140 results, none contemporaneous.
• "Impeach Reagan" - 10,700 results
• "Impeach Clinton"  - 62,900 results
• "Impeach Bush"       - 2.2 million results
• "Impeach Obama"  - 1.0 million results

Supreme partisan Jon Kyl