Republicans were few—you could count them on one hand—in our Chicago neighborhood. The one on our block, Bob O’Rourke, was the Republican counterpart to Ann W. O’Brien, the Democratic precinct captain and my aunt. O’Rourke, always dressed in suit and tie (even on the hottest days), had an office job. He was invariably polite and genial, though a bit reticent around my father and his fierce Democratic loyalties. O’Rourke had the duty, as did my aunt, to get his voters to the polls—few though they were. This was more time-consuming for her than for him; even so, she never failed to help him out on other precinct-captain duties, negotiating the repair of potholes, arranging garbage pick-ups, and removing fallen tree branches. Now and again, my aunt may have turned one of his voters to her own purposes by offering a very special favor (a city job). As far as we know, he never turned one of hers. He was too upright: a model Republican, full of probity and gravitas—the Dwight Eisenhower and Robert Taft of Carmen Avenue.
That probity and gravitas long served as a counterweight to the transgressions and rowdiness of the Democrats. But today there are few Republican exemplars of either probity or gravitas: only Richard Lugar of Indiana comes immediately to mind. Most of his congressional colleagues are not serious about governing; too many are just, well, clownish.
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When did Republicans lose their probity and gravitas? Does Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid go too far back? Richard Nixon was smart, but lacked probity (remember the racist underpinnings of his Southern strategy). Ronald Reagan had plenty of probity but not gravitas (recall supply-side economics and its trickle-down corollary). George H. W. Bush personified probity and gravitas lite.
The tendencies to stray from traditional Republican policies of limited government and balanced budgets may have been festering, but none of these Republicans were truly pursuing the goal of no government at all. That began with the “Contract with America,” a manifesto conceived by the Heritage Foundation and hatched for the 1994 congressional elections by Congressmen Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, and John Boehner. The plan essentials were to dismantle government by reducing its resources (income taxes, mineral royalties, etc.) and eradicating regulations. Then, as the government ceased to function, the Gingriches of the world could proclaim a self-fulfilled prophecy: Government doesn’t work. President Bill Clinton was correct in calling it the “Contract on America.”
“The Party of No” came into its own in 2000 with the “election” of George W. Bush and Republican control of Congress. Gingrich was out of office, cheerleading from a cushy perch, but DeLay and Armey were there to carry on. With the help of W. and Vice President Dick Cheney, they brought us to where we are today: tax cuts that destroyed a balanced budget, Medicare Part D, two wars financed off-budget, illegal and immoral practices against foreign prisoners, a deregulated economy, and soaring deficits. The Democrats didn’t exactly acquit themselves with probity in the Bush years (many of them embracing those tax cuts). While the Republicans were in charge, the Democrats were unwilling or unable to put the brake on such irresponsible governance.
Though the Democrats are now in control of Congress, they are obstructed by the minority. The Party of No systematically thwarts Democratic efforts to extend unemployment benefits, reform the financial system, bring down health-care costs, stimulate the economy, and begin to remedy the budget deficit. At the same time, the Senate impedes the president’s ability to govern by holding up the appointment of cabinet-level administrators and federal judges. The Republicans’ goal: implementing the contract on America by sapping the effectiveness of government.
If Republicans take back control of Congress on November 2, this zombie politics will come into full play with the Party of No joined by the Party of Hell No (the Tea Party) in eviscerating government. Minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), he of the perpetual tan, regularly announces Republican policies that turn out to be no policies; if he becomes speaker of the House, it will be No with a vengeance, including investigations of everything the Democrats did, or tried to do, in the 111 Congress. Should Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) become Senate majority leader, the paralysis will reach out the door and down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House where President Barack Obama will have only the power of the veto to thwart them.
Unless Obama and his fellow Democrats rally their base to step up and stop a Republican sweep in the midterm election, we will become the nation that the Republicans have worked so hard to create, a nation with a fourth-rate government, a third-rate economy, and a first-rate military (imagine what they will do with that).
The party of probity and gravitas has become the party of duplicity and triviality. Where are the Bob O’Rourkes of this world when we really need them?
This column was first published on our Web site on September 22, 2010.
Related: Extreme Makeover, by E. J. Dionne Jr.
Well then, Mr. Miller, if the evidence that President Obama's policies have been a failure is really "irrefutable and ubiquitous," you should have no trouble presenting it. Or are you just throwing around adjectives again? You allude to the role Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had in the subprime mortgage market, and to the Community Reinvestment Act, but I expect you know that most of the institutions involved in subprime lending were not subject to that law. Companies like Countrywide Financial were not doing the bidding of liberal busybodies; they were providing fodder for the lucrative, underregulated securitization market on Wall Street. The real problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was that they were trying to keep up with the big profits being made by their least scrupulous private competitors, and this meant aggresively hawking dubious mortgages. Institutions underwritten like public utilities need to be regulated like public utilities.
It's people on your side who are the votaries of magical thinking, believing that the uninhibited pursuit of individual self-interest automatically leads to the greatest possible collective welfare. The Invisible Hand is your Santa Claus, and if most people are left with a lump of coal, your side says it's because of the big, bad Welfare State, or because a lump of coal is all that most people really want or need, or because Santa Claus doesn't owe them a damn thing.
People on our side believe that the common good requires collective deliberation and collective action, which means, yes, government (of, by, and for the people), progessive taxation, and adequate regulation.
Your Santayana line is great, by the way -- and, like most of your quotations, totally beside the point.
I can safely assume that, after his failure to respond two challenges to refute my criticism of Ms. Steinfels’ article as an exercise in liberal smugness and name-calling, he has implicitly conceded the point.
His insistence that no liberal busybodies were pushing sub-prime lending shows how far in denial he is. Just watch Andrew Cuomo in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64
“The poverty rate has reached the highest level in the half-century that the government has kept track.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091606377.html?wprss=rss_nation
Unemployment rate in October, 2008 "Nonfarm payroll employment declined by 159,000 in September, and the unemployment rate held at 6.1 percent. “ http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=804&type=educator Check the current rate to see if Obama’s policies have helped.
Mr. Boudway says that my quotations are irrelevant, but I’m content to let the reader determine that for themselves. Mr. Boudway, like other religious fundamentalists, simply have to deny reality. No amount of evidence will shake their fundamentalist beliefs in liberalism. Debate is impossible with people like this. They cling to their religion and guns smugness because they cannot accept that their belief system is delusional.
Come to California and see Republican disfunction at its height. Witless Meg has spend over $140 million to try to get elected so she can whack at the pinata called public employees. Arnold (aka GAS) is the poster child for can't get anything accomplished. Fiora was fired from HP and now is running for the Senate but admits she mostly didn't vote in the past and actually financially supported democrats. Where oh where are the sensible, stable and well-reputed Republican candidates? Certainly not a part of our current experience either here or nationwide.