Right Turn Clyde...Obama Went To the Yellow Line in the Center

…or, Liberals Need More Guts…And As Big a Set of Tea Bags As The Tea Baggers.

Liberals voted in Barack Obama for the purpose of implementing Change, drastic, and fundamental Change (I use the capital-C deliberately), but as I look back, I am reminded of the statement from, of all places, the television show, The West Wing.  The President is meeting with a Supreme Court Justice who is resigning, or more accurately, retiring.  As is apparently customary, the Justice is having a private chat with the President prior to entering the Oval Office where he will formally tender his resignation, but it is clear that the Justice is peeved with the President.    The Justice, played by the late, great character actor Mason Adams, looks at the President and says,

“You ran great guns in the campaign. It was an insurgency, boy, a sight to see. And then you drove to the middle of the road the moment after you took the oath. Just the middle of the road.  Nothing but a long line painted yellow.  I wanted a Democrat; instead I got you. Republicans have guts." 

Every time I think of that scene, I think I have lived it since the last election.  When I voted for Barack Obama, I wanted a semi-radical; a President that would see the super-majority and, during a joint session of Congress, would turn to the Republican side of the isle, look them all in the collective eye and say, “Ladies and gentleman; we won the election, we have the super-majority.  Sit down, hold on, and enjoy, because you are in for a Hell of a ride.”  What I got was a right-hand turn to the center, and I am sorely disappointed.  Unfortunately, I do not see an alternative for us Liberals, but to re-elect him.  It is truly making the best of a less-than-ideal situation.

There are any number of jokes made about Liberals; most of them are pointed toward the Democrats and Democratic Party.  I choose to ignore the public relations crap that would have us believe that the Democratic Party must be referred to as “The Democrat Party.”  First, it offends my sensibilities regarding the English language.  Second, it is just petty B.S. that serves no purpose, other than to illustrate a point I shall make regarding Loyal Opposition.  So, allow me some literary license to interchangeably use Liberal (note capital ‘L’) and Democrat.

The joke illustrative of the problem we have as Liberals is in the quote of Will Rogers, “I don’t belong to an organized political party.  I’m a Democrat.”  It was true then and it is true now.  The Democratic Party is so interested in the Liberal values of fairness and equality, so engaged in self-analysis, and at times, seemingly, self-loathing, that they can’t figure out what they should do.  If they do agree on what they should do, they eat their own young while pondering the question as to how they should do it.  There are lists of other psychic conundrums in which Liberals engage that makes them less effectual as leaders than Conservatives and Republicans.  I am not speaking against truth, fairness or equality, but what is the point of all those high-minded values if it paralyzes the party in power, and nothing is implemented?

The Democrats seem to have a near instinctual need to seek out differing opinions and when they are presented with differing opinions or mechanisms of implementation, they feel honor bound to take those views into consideration.  The Left, prizes itself as the party of intellectual honesty.  They engage in self analysis, take great pains to be inclusive and are enthralled with alternatives.  While these are all seemingly laudable characteristics and worthy attributes, they do not serve to enforce party discipline.

These same attributes can make for party chaos and are used to stymie progress and implementation of programs. You know, like the Congress managed to do…no like the Democrats allowed the Republicans to do…in the House and particularly in the Senate, where the Democrats held a super-majority?  It was disorganization and lack of Party discipline that prevented all the legislation on which all the Democrats and, yes, the President, ran and got elected.

We live in an admittedly politically polarized society.  However, I would submit that the Left has remained where it always has been, at least since the Roosevelt administration, while the Right (capital ‘R’) has moved toward an ever-increasingly conservative position on the political continuum.   This has resulted in an unfortunate set of situations that I believe have become quite obvious.

I would argue that contrary to the observation of the fictional Supreme Court Justice quoted above, it is not so much guts that Republicans have, but discipline.  Republicans teach their newbie politician, recently elected party members to tow the party line and are very effective at it.  The use of pressure, often called “negotiation” and “compromise,” is used very effectively to keep members of the party in line.  I consider it more of a brute force tactic, actually, but potāto, potăto.

If you vote inconsistent with the party line, there are, regardless of what you call them, serious consequences.  The Republicans will do anything to enforce party discipline.  Congressmen that do not vote as they should are punished.  They do not get choice committee assignments, or the choice committee assignment is taken away, projects in their districts do not come up for votes or never get to be part of the pork barrel project list.  Party support is withdrawn during a primary or maybe an alternative candidate is presented.  Short of being tied to a chair in the Halls of Congress and being flogged publicly (they do the flogging in the cloak rooms); there is guaranteed to be a price to pay if the party line is not towed.  The Right manages this because it has one thing that the Left does not, party discipline.  The Right enforces loyalty. 

The Right has become a group that seeks, at all potential costs, to remain and/or regain power.  This has resulted in an assessment that anything the Left or Liberals do is wrong.  It is the path to complete oblivion and it is inherently and intrinsically evil.  It has resulted in a lack of cooperative government.  The Right is no longer the Loyal Opposition.  They have become the party of denial and obstructionism.  If the Left wants to do something, anything, the Right says no; no matter what it might be.  Good ideas, even ideas that the Right has proposed in the past, once proposed by the Left, become unacceptable.  We have a government that has devolved to the level of a sandbox full of four-year-olds.  The Right is more interested in finding something to make you afraid of and then blame it on the Liberal Left.  You know, us Commie, Pinko types.  Barack Obama has been labeled, at various times, a Socialist, a Communist, a Marxist (there is a difference, by the way), even, God forbid, a Muslim, and by presumably, fairly well-educated individuals that are supposed to know the meaning of what they are calling him.

I believe this lack of discipline of the Democrats and incredible discipline on the part of the Right explains why, with a super-majority in the Senate, the Democratic Party could not manage to pass the Health Care Bill without significantly watering it down.   The lack of discipline comes from the top down.  Allow me to use an illustrative example. 

Regardless of how you feel about the policy, Barack Obama was elected, in part, on a promise to end the "don’t ask, don’t tell" (DADT) policy of the military and allow openly gay individuals to serve their country in the Armed Forces.  Again, whether you like the policy or hate it, Candidate Obama said he would end it, and he promised to do so.

When Barack Obama took the Oath of Office, he not only became President of the United States, but also became Commander in Chief of all the Armed Forces of the United States of America.  He was the absolute authority, the top dog, the head honcho what be in charge.  You get the idea.  As the Commander in Chief, he had complete authority and, with the stroke of a pen, could have issued an Order to the Armed Forces that “DADT” was over.  Instead of acting on his promise, he chose to take that right turn, abandon the insurgency that got him elected and, instead of using his authority, said he preferred to do it “legislatively.” 

The President burned a lot of political capital doing it this way and he disappointed a huge number of Liberals that trusted him as a man of his word.  While I believe him to be better than anything the Right Wing has had to offer since possibly Ronald Reagan, I got a lot less than I expected and a lot less than I was promised. 

One of the lessons of history is that one of the greatest abuses of power is not to use it when you have it.  Imagine what would be happening to Libyans if the UN was not taking action, and exercising power, to defend the protesting people of that country. If the Liberals in political positions of power in this country do not become more disciplined and start exercising the proper application of power, I fear we are doomed to live at the hands of the corporations that have managed to buy the legislative authority of the Right.  But that is another discussion, for another time.