The Week in Review

An interesting five days have we just witnessed, noteworthy not only for the events of those days but for the response  (or curious lack of response) to those events. Two such responses, in particular, stand out.

First, on Tuesday we awaken to learn that Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen regime change as an Israeli strategy for its self-defense though in this instance it is not the regime of its enemies that he seeks to change but that of the government of the United States. Bibi, it seems, has grown tired of the Obama administration’s prudent and cautious approach to Iran and saw fit to use the opportunity of a fairly ordinary news conference to castigate the Obama administration for not providing him carte blanche authority to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran in an unquestionably fruitless attempt to end the Iranian nuclear program. That the statement, made to an Israeli audience, was spoken in Bib’s nearly accentless English left no doubt about his intended audience – the American Jewish community and its renegade sponsors like Sheldon Adelson. In so doing, Mr. Netanyahu has clearly dropped any pretense of sitting on the sidelines waiting for the Adelson/Koch/Rove strategy to place a Republican in the White House and decided to take matters into his own hands by making a point that he knows will clearly stir the pot of conservative Jewish anxiety about a Black president with a Muslim-sounding name seeming to hold Israel’s fate in his hands.

Plainly stated, Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts are an outrage and an affront to this country, no less than the willingness of the Eqyptian and Lybian governments to remain mute while American interests are attacked to deadly affect.

And then there is Mitt Romney who somehow   has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Putting aside the impropriety of his having commented upon a highly sensitive and explosive international crisis by criticizing the policy of the United States when a united front is needed, he offered those comments without having the facts and thus offered a critique that had no basis in reality. It is indeed remarkable that he finds it appropriate to make inappropriate comments upon issues he knows nothing about while offering the American people not a word about what his government would do to solve the problems which he claims have so damaged the nation. That he would think it appropriate to politicize the death of four Americans for his own political gain can only be viewed as a desperate attempt to reverse a course in his campaign for the White House that has gone astray. If nothing else, Mr. Romney’s performance either in or commenting upon the international stage has revealed one of his strengths…alienating our allies and undermining the interests of the United States.  Unfit to govern is the only way to describe Mr. Romney’s performance to date. The only thing more frightening about Mr. Romney’s performance is that it has had so little effect upon his standing in the polls.

Eastwood Redux

I suppose because the real Barack Obama was a less viable target for the Republican's aspiring to supplant him in 2012, the primary season bore witness to the creation of a "Straw Man" version of the President. Over and over again, from the mouths of everyone from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to Michelle Bachman, the candidates took turns blasting away at a President and a set of policies that did not and never had existed. Cheers rang the halls where stood the GOP aspirants as they pointed at the fictitious Barack Obama and condemned him for being a socialist, for being a "baby killer", for not being born in the United States, for being a Muslim who was secretly the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and for conspiring to strip fine law abiding Americans of their right to carry a WMD in their pockets. Listening to this lunacy we took solace in the expectation that because so many of these candidates were playing to the lunatic political fringes of our society, the hyperbole would quiet once a candidate emerged and the true campaign started. Boy were we wrong.

Not only did the "Straw Man" version of Barack Obama not exit left, but he, in fact, became front and center at the recently completed Republican convention. Nothing could have more perfectly underscored the fear of the Republican party running against the real President and his real policies than the sight of Clint Eastwood speaking to an empty chair upon which sat an invisible President who, in much the same fashion that Michelle Bachmann and her cohorts lambasted the President during the primary season for all of his fictitious failings, was then lampooned by Mr. Eastwood much to the delight of the assembled hordes. The performance by Mr. Eastwood was not the actions of a doddering old fool. This is, after all, one of our leading movie makers and actors who continues to deliver some of the most powerful films of our day. No, Mr. Eastwood's performance perfectly encapsulated what has been apparent to anyone who is not part of the base to which this tragi-comedy is directed...that because the Republicans and Mr. Romney realize that they cannot take on an actual Barack Obama, they have to make one up and then expend tens of millions of dollars to convince the unconvinced that the fictitious Obama is real and the real Obama is fictitious. 

One can only hope that when Mr. Romney is forced to stand beside the actual Barack Obama and not the invisible, foul-mouthed one dragged onto the stage of the RNC convention by Mr. Eastwood,  that Mr. Romney will be forced to address the real President, his real policies and his real plans for the future. There are, without any doubt, questions...real questions...that should be asked an answered by the President about his policies and his plans. The American people are entitled to those answers, but so too is the electorate entitled to have a choice between two candidates who base their positions on the facts and in reality. To this point, Mr. Romney has not shown an willingness to deal with the facts and with the reality of those facts. One can only hope that the President will leave Mr. Romney no choice but to finally engage the real Barack Obama. 

Ungovernable II

What the Republican Party has done to this country is despicable. What the Democratic Party, including the President, has done in allowing the Republican Party to get away with its agenda is as despicable. Both parties are equally responsible for damaging if not outright ruining the lives of millions of Americans and should be held accountable. The Republican agenda is clear and quite publicly stated by many including most notably Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader. Regardless of the damage inflicted, they have made clear that they will not permit the President to succeed. To that end, taking advantage of Senate rules that somehow, in clear denigration of the Constitution, did away with the filibuster rules, Republicans took turns announcing their intention to filibuster virtually every piece of legislation advanced by the Obama administration. For their part, rather than demanding that the Senator at issue actually filibuster in public by tying up Senate business spending days reading from a telephone book, Senate Democrats simply put their collective tails between their legs, looked at the numbers and concluded that were the threat to filibuster actually carried out they wouldn't have enough votes to end the strategy. Consequently with the threat alone,  in the comfort of their offices and out of public purview, Republicans, seemingly engaged in a macabre tag team wrestling match, took turns announcing their intention to filibuster thus ending any chance of any Obama-sponsored legislation getting passed  without ever having to carry through on their threat. Having barred Obama at the barn door, like a schoolyard bully, Republicans now blame Obama for failing to fulfill his promises. How many times during the recently completed convention did Republican speakers castigate the President for failing to fulfill his promises without once acknowledging not only that they were complicit in the failure but that it was central to their strategy. Meanwhile, despite their laughter at the conundrum they have successfully created for the President, millions of Americans suffer as pawns in a sick game of chicken. In any event, so goes the strategy which they have executed to horrific effect.

For their part, Democrats, at least until recently, had as big a set of balls as a Roman Eunuch when it came to pushing back against the Republican strategy. Recall that they were the party in power in 2008 having seized both houses as well as the White House and with a clear mandate to implement the policies which the public endorsed in the voting booth. What did we get instead? A President so intent to avoid any criticism that he was not making an effort to work with the Republican minority that he never realized until it was too late that the Repbulicans had no intention of cooperating on anything advocated by this President. The President's intentions, however good, nevertheless doomed much of what he hoped to accomplish (though he was able to accomplish much despite the Republican strategy) and set him on the a path toward possibly being a one-term President. For their part, House Democrats literally ran against many of Obama's policies, fearful that a stand with the President would result in their losing in the coming election. What they didn't realize or seem to understand is that the electorate, at least that part which actually demands facts and principles, does not and will not favor an elected official who doesn't have the guts to stand by his or her principles. Regrettably, Democrats never realized that the only thing they should have feared was their own loss of principle and for that transgression they were punished by an electorate that, at the time, was becoming enamored with the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party. The Democrats, and the President, fearful of taking a stand and telling Republicans to get on board or get out of the way, lost their way, leaving in their wake the disaster which masquerades as the federal government. 

If Mitt Romney is elected the Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.