A WORLD OF POLITICAL CONTRADICTIONS

George Bush said something like” Get over it. We won the election.” It was his response to the anger from the Democratic opposition to his policies. He made it clear that the issues had been resolved “by the American people” and that the Dems could just shut up until the next election. It is salient to my comment that we remember that comment.

Fast forward to yesterday and the avalanche of self-congratulating press conferences by the resurgent Republicans. House speaker-in-waiting John Boehner making it clear that “the people of America have spoken. We are only responding to their wishes." They want: and this is the clever Boehner speaking, to create jobs and to cut costs. This was the most reasonable, however inane and contradictory, comment. Others are much more direct (and foolish) the Obama-Care program has to be rescinded. We have to continue with the Bush tax cuts even if it means many billions to the top 2% of the people.

But the irony is that from the minute Obama was inaugurated, the Republicans behaved as if they did not believe that “the American people had spoken.” Loudly and clearly the voters were in favour of the Health Care plan, especially in favour of Single Pay. They wanted curbs put on the banking monopoly. They wanted money spent to create jobs and save the country from Depression. Why on earth, I ask, does the “people’s will” expressed in the return of the Republicans resonate any more than the people’s will to elect Obama and pack both the Senate and House with Democrats? I see no difference.

But in the old and wacky way that politics U.S.-style seem to work, it depends on whose ox is being gored. At the heart of the problem, to my everlasting regret, is the President’s fruitless pursuit of bi-partisan harmony. In the months he spent trying to get the Republicans in line he squandered the political capital he had earned during the election. He threw away his chance to make a real difference.

Therein also lies a dilemma and a contradiction. The American people voted for change, but the Republicans were politically smart enough to realize that Americans are not so secure that they really crave change. They are, in a way, like the frightened horse that will flee by going back into the burning barn. The power of billions spent, especially by third parties where no one who knew who the donors were, convincing America that the Democrats had gone too. That tactic hit at the centre of their fear: there was going to be too much change. What would their lives be like under a whole new set of value? However tough things were, it was better the devil you know.…etc.

I think the Republicans understood. I think the Democrats failed to exercise the power the voters gave them. They deserted the truly liberal voters, the young, the ethnically disparate, the sexually compromised, the millions who had no health care and the millions who were insured but not really, the millions who lost and ares till losing their homes. Voters could, intellectually at least, accept a transformative president. But could they accept someone who wanted to turn their reality upside down. Government sponsored health care good for you?? Controls on the banks?

One of my favourite statements is the one made so often by the true free-market advocates in the U.S. and in Canada: government does not create jobs, business does. Those precise words have been uttered, not only by the Tea Party nitwits, but by Republicans who should, and I suspect do, know better.

Deficits in the service of job creation are no less valid than tax cuts in the same cause. The sad fact is that tax cuts simply allow those who have enough already to squirrel more away, and for companies who are too cautious to expand, to simply use the easy money to pay down their debt.

In short, America is held captive by an ideology that is not just the orthodox market economy, but psychologically the burning barn - which is better than nothing.