"Where do we go from here? Heaven only knows. I do know this however - right now this country is just inches away from being ungovernable."
Okay. I will admit it. I am a sucker for a good conspiracy theory - however, it does have to be good! I don't care which administration is in power, there is always someone looking in the closet or under the bed for a boogie man. Some say it started with Watergate. Historians will tell you it goes back much further than that. Heck, it might even goes back to the beginning, when George Washington himself came under scrutiny for joining a secret society known as the Freemasons.
I am old enough to remember the Watergate scandal quite clearly. Richard Nixon was in the first term of his presidency. Like Donald Trump, there was a whole gaggle of folks who did not care for him. But unlike Donald Trump, Nixon had folks working in the West Wing that knew how to play the Washington game. Despite his shaky popularity, all the polls showed Nixon was going to cruise to an easy re-election victory over McGovern. And then the unexplainable happened. A break-in at the DNC headquarters, located at the Watergate complex.
What came out of Watergate? First off, it made Woodward and Bernstein famous. So much so, they are still hanging around as panel guests on different talk shows. It introduced us to Deep Throat (not a porn guy). It was he who "ratted out" some folks, and really broke the case wide open. It showed us that in life, it can be the cover up more so than the crime. Nixon was pretty clean on the break-in itself, but very dirty on the cover up. It cost him his job, and put the country through great torment.
I won't go through all the scandals since then. Suffice it to say that there have been quite a few. And that leads us up to today. The Washington "swamp" has developed a new dimension - the Deep State. Actually, the way Washington works, I am surprised that we have not heard about this issue before. When a new Administration comes in, there are still thousands of people left in jobs who were hired by the former Administration. Some are very loyal to the previous administration. Some are even ideologues.
With President Trump, "leaks" coming out of the White House and the intelligence services have been profound - and dangerous. It did not take long for this new President to suspect there are some rats in the woodpile.
So where are we today? It is almost like a comedy of errors. We have the Democrats who want every nook and cranny investigated. Why? They think we have a Dr. Strangelove type of corruption in the West Wing. Will they find something? Maybe.
On the other hand, we have the Republicans who are convinced there are dozens of Obama holdovers who are trying to sabotage the Trump Administration. Plus, President Trump also believes Obama loyalists illegally conducted surveillance on Trump Tower before the inauguration. Bottom line - Washington is a hot mess.
Where do we go from here? Heaven only knows. I do know this however - right now our country is just inches away from being ungovernable. What would help us get back on track? Both parties need to truly govern by the Constitution.
Our founding papers were never intended to be partisan. Indeed, they were intended to be bipartisan for a very important reason - proper and fair governance. If we don't get back to that, we might not have a country to govern anymore.
America is being governed pretty well at the state level, mostly by Republicans, and they don’t seem to have the problems that the national GOP is facing in Congress. As Charles C.W. Cooke writes in National Review, “At the state level, the GOP has been remarkably effective at ushering in reform over the last seven years; at the federal level, by contrast, it has been able only to hold the line.” And I’d say that’s a charitable assessment.
ReplyDeleteIt’s true of course, as Cooke notes, that the GOP has been in control in the states for longer, while it’s been less than 100 days since Trump was sworn in as president. But it’s also true that the national politicians seem more hidebound, more risk-averse, less energetic than those at state levels. As Matthew Continetti notes, they put legislative priorities ahead of the country’s. In essence, they let the Senate parliamentarian and the Congressional Budget Office undo the results of the 2016 election.
Is this a matter of personnel or of structure? That is, are Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just bad at what they do, so that replacing them would solve the problem? Or is the real problem the constellation of interest groups in Washington, a web of special interests that makes real progress impossible? Or is it something else?
One thing that’s different at the federal level is that the major news media have much more impact on national politics than they have on state politics: State legislators rarely have to worry about what The New York Times, The Washington Post or NBC News has to say about their issues. And while they have local media to consider, those are usually less monolithically left-leaning and less influential. (Indeed, the reduced influence of the Democrat-favoring national media out in the states may explain why the GOP has done better in state, local, and congressional races than in national races over most recent elections). But is that enough to explain it? I’m not sure.
Regardless, something’s wrong in Washington. Trump’s a quick study, so maybe he’ll figure out a way to salvage the Obamacare debacle. But regardless, the ineptitude of our congressional leaders seems unlikely to change anytime soon. That’s bad for Trump, but it’s worse for America.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteComing soon to a cable channel near you! The "Obstructionist Follies", starring Flynn, Nunes, Cohen, Ellis, Kurchner, Bannon, Priebus, Miller with special guest Donald Trump! The information has reached the top of the slippery slope and can no longer be side-tracked with outlandish tweets or Sean Spicer song and dance routines.
ReplyDelete