What we are watching unfold has little to do with any negative repercussions stemming from a government shutdown. First of all, the government can’t shut down. Virtually all essential services would remain. We are looking at a sequester like event. You remember the “sequester”, don’t you? It was that cataclysmic fall over the fiscal cliff that happened last year. Did you know we are still in the sequester? No disaster, no tragedy, no horror stories; only photo ops by Republicans of a few Illegal immigrants being released and Democratic photo ops of school kids crying because they couldn’t take the White House tour; neither are nice, but neither are fatal. From an observer perspective the battle on the Democratic side is about salvaging a collapsing Presidency without yielding any long term power to Congress. The Affordable Care Act is not just the signature achievement of the administration, it may be its only achievement. Coming off of the negative press of Bengazi, NSA, IRS, and Syria, the President and the Democrats in Congress are eager to find some escape hatch. That’s why the Russians are taking the lead in Syria and why we are, once again, being sucked into a delaying negotiation with Iran. Since the Ayatola indicated a six month window in which they wanted to achieve a deal, my estimate is they will have nuclear weapon capability in five months. The Democrats view any compromise on the Affordable Care Act as tarnish on the only remaining legacy of this administration. Their intention is to hold it together until the mid term elections in the hopes that the status quo holds until 2016. President Obama is prepared to barter away nearly every portion of the Act as long as the House is not in the discussion, as long as it is he who chooses what to enforce and it can’t be perceived as a Republican victory. The Democrats need 2014, badly. The Republicans are just as entrenched and just as committed to remove this Act as the Democrats are to maintain it, and for much the same reason. With Hilary Clinton the likely nominee of the Democrats and by all accounts a formidable if not unbeatable opponent to any of the current Republican possibilities, the Republicans need to enter the elections with a boost in 2014 and a weakened Democratic party for 2016. The street issues of jobs, medical coverage, stagnant GDP, lowered expectation abroad, and the crushing public debt are lost in the noise of us versus them. This fight has nothing to do with what’s good for the country. It is about power politics and nothing more. While we are one country, we are very evenly split. What is perceived as good to some of us is perceived as bad by others. The only way to progress as a nation where from many arise one, is to edge our way along through compromise. I think it was Bill Clinton who said that when you fundamentally disagree with others you are faced with three choices. You can convince them of your truth, you can conquer them, or you can compromise. Everything about the United States is derived from compromise except our right to exist. That required conquering. But we are who we are because we move forward slowly, each side trying to find common ground. Examples of other nations without this tradition abound; Nicaragua, Syria, Egypt Yugoslavia, Myanmar, the list is long. Compromise or conquer, because convince is off the table. Stop trying to figure out who to blame and start trying to fix the damn thing.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 03:03:06 +0000
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