QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
“I often make the point that people who want a weak, starved government with little government support for education, healthcare, or quality of the environment would find their ideal country in Haiti.”
Eben Carsey, M.D.
Boulder, Colorado
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Carsey and his wife, Lynn Gilbert, a nurse practitioner and professor, have frequently traveled to Haiti to provide free health care for Haitian citizens.)
SENSE AND NONSENSE—BRIDGE BUILDERS OR WALL BUILDERS?
From the editor: When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gets on national television and threatens the President and the country, he is building a wall. In a recent interview, McConnell said, “In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling it will not be clean anymore…Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order.”
McConnell is willing to take the country hostage. He also said, “What we did learn is this -- it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.” The “ransom” McConnell has in mind is draconian cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without any new revenue. By starving the government, McConnell will kill any chance of economic recovery between now and November, 2012. Even if Obama is re-elected, McConnell will use the threat of not increasing the debt ceiling to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich in December, 2012. The headline will be “BRINKSMANSHIP TRUMPS RATIONAL POLICY AGAIN!”
McConnell may not be willing to “shoot” the hostage, but he is certainly willing to hold American citizens hostage until Republicans are paid a king’s ransom. The leading Republican in the Senate has not only threatened the President, he has in the same breath threatened every citizen of this country. If a leading Democrat such as Nancy Pelosi had threatened President Bush in the same manner, there would have been an immediate response by Republicans to impeach her.
Ironically, wall-builder McConnell refused to negotiate with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the eleventh hour of the debt-ceiling hostage negotiations. He insisted on negotiating with the President. He knew the President had a history of paying the ransom, and he was rewarded with an agreement that Republicans dared not even wish for before last December.
President Obama’s version of bridge building is housed in the term “bi-partisanship.” He is staking his effectiveness as a leader on being a politician willing to compromise. Apparently, he has overlooked the fact that bi-partisanship and compromise only work when one has first established his principles—his or her “line in the sand.”
To be an effective bridge builder, one must first sink sturdy pillars (principles) into the ground. Some of Obama’s speeches give Democrats hope for a better future, but his actions, or lack thereof, cancel any feelings of hope. Without standing firm on the principles he talked about in his campaign—affordable health care, restoring and protecting the middle class, jobs, affordable higher education, holding Wall Street accountable, and getting us out of two wars—his words remain empty.
Instead of blaming a dysfunctional Congress for the country’s poor economic status, he could draw his line in the sand from his “bully pulpit” with the following declaration:
FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, I WILL NO LONGER PARTICIPATE IN OR PROMOTE IN ANY WAY, THE MYTH THAT “TRICKLE DOWN” OR SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS WORK. INSTEAD, I WILL BUILD A BRIDGE BETWEEN WORKING AMERICANS AND OPPORTUNITY BY:
- Letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Individual household budgets cannot work without revenue. Neither can the federal budget. The top one percent of taxpayers must pay their fair share in taxes.
- Eliminating corporate welfare. Employ a “carrot and stick” approach by eliminating tax loopholes and rewarding corporations that create living wage jobs in this country.
- Protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Protect Medicare and Medicaid with a public option and protect Social Security by collecting payroll taxes on incomes over $106,800.
If President Obama REFUSED to compromise on just these three principles, he might not get them through Congress in the short-term, but he might get re-elected in 2012 and start a movement through which Democrats regain control of both houses. The alternative is to continue playing the Republican game of brinksmanship.
Maynard Chapman, Editor
The Compass Newsletter
OBAMA’S CEREBRAL CALCULUS IGNORES EMOTION QUOTIENT
From the editor: The good news is that President Obama is focused on the 2012 election. The bad news is that he needs new glasses. He was elected in 2008 by touching an emotional chord with voters. His promise of hope and change in Washington got people to the polls in unprecedented numbers. Then came the mid-term 2010 elections when the Tea Party, backed by an unlimited supply of money, resurrected a powerful emotional chord—big government is the enemy. Since 2008, President Obama has ignored the emotional side of politics. As a result, his political miscalculations are gargantuan in size.
First, he was advised by his closest advisors led by his first chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that his progressive base of voters have nowhere to go except to him when 2012 rolls around. This advice ignores the reality that progressive voters may not vote Republican, but they will stay at home or shoot themselves in the foot through third-party movements such as those endorsed by columnists Tom Friedman and by gadfly Ralph Nader. The “Nader” factor along with the Supreme Court and the butterfly ballot left us with Bush instead of Gore.
Second, Obama has chosen “Triangulation on Steroids” as a re-election strategy. President Obama’s code word for triangulation is “bipartisanship.” Obama’s most trusted advisors now are David Plough and William M. Daley, who was chosen as the new chief of staff precisely because he has “friends” on both sides of the aisle in Congress. The Plough/Daley strategy is to appeal to independent voters by appealing to Republicans in Congress. The result of this strategy is a plummeting approval rating for Obama. President Obama has allowed the political debate to be about cutting spending without revenue and the debt ceiling. As The Compass said one year ago in September, 2010, “The message is JOBS.” The gain by Republicans in the 2010 election was because millions had no jobs. It was not because of the national debt.
Third, President Obama was elected in 2008 on the hope that he was an alternative to the Bush policies. His willingness to capitulate to Republicans even when public opinion is against Republicans is frustrating to his progressive base and to pragmatic independents and Democrats who believe the rich should pay their fair share in taxes. Hence in December, 2010, when Obama agreed to an extension of the Bush tax cuts, he sent a clear message to voters that he was weak and in the pockets of Republicans and the super rich. He has reinforced that message by allowing the Mitch McConnell wing of the Republican Party to take the country hostage through the political game of brinksmanship. We undoubtedly will see another chapter in brinksmanship when the 12-member “Select Committee on Deficit Reduction” issues its binding decision on deficit reduction before November 23, 2011. The Republican side of this committee only needs one of the Democrats on the committee to agree there should be no revenue increases. Senator Max Baucus of Montana is the most likely candidate to drink the Republican Kool-Aid.
These three political miscalculations have a common denominator that could be disastrous in 2012. The miscalculations are based upon “crunching numbers” instead of tuning in to the “feelings” of voters. Drew Westen, professor of psychology at Emory University, tells the “story” of what has happened to President Obama since he was elected in 2008. The story appeared in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times, Aug. 7, 2011. (See “What Happened to Obama.”) The article makes a compelling case that Obama has failed miserably at communicating with the American voting public.
For example, Westen contrasts the emotive message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the passionless cold political strategy of President Obama. Westen writes, “He (Dr. King) preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.”
Westen continues, “In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public -- a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it.”
Westen’s 2007 book, The Political Brain -- The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, provides a much-needed road map to victory for Democrats in the Presidential election of 2012. Following are a few excerpts from his book that should be heeded by Obama.
“Feeling and thinking evolved together, and nature ‘designed’ them to work together.”
“In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins.”
“Since Franklin Roosevelt more than sixty years ago, only one Republican incumbent (George H.W. Bush) has failed in his bid for re-election to the Presidency, whereas only one Democrat (Bill Clinton) has succeeded.”
“…emotionally compelling appeals need not be appeals to people’s fears and prejudices. They can just as easily be appeals to their hopes and dreams, their sense of shared fate or purpose, their better angels, or their sense that there might be someone who genuinely cares about their welfare and has what it takes to help restore it.”
To quote Wall Street demagogue Rick Santelli, “Mr. President, are you listening?”
Copyright © 2011, The Compass Society
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