By Bill Stewart
In the 1920s, Cole Porter wrote a comedic song entitled “Well, Did You Evah?” He was right then and he’s even more right now. Rarely has the world been in such a mess: America’s economic meltdown and our inability, so far, to handle it (with Europe not far behind); China’s economy in stunning decline; Japan’s GDP falling by an astonishing 10 percent in the last quarter of 2008; two of President Barack Obama’s most senior nominations withdrawing because of tax problems that reflect badly on the President’s promise to bring in people with high ethical standards; a fractured Middle East peace process that may be beyond repair; a losing war in Afghanistan, and now the Pope’s inability to keep his bishops straight, first rehabilitating a Holocaust denier (provoking a crisis in Vatican-Israeli relations) and then demanding the rehabilitated bishop recant the Holocaust views that got him into trouble in the first place but didn’t prevent his rehabilitation. I mean, “Well, did you evah?”
It’s clear that nobody really knows how to get us out of our current economic mess. Whatever the final dimensions and content of the much heralded stimulus plan, it seems that nobody really knows if it is going to work. We can only cross our fingers and hope. In the meantime, politicians of all colors are having a field day. Democrats in the House of Representatives seem to have hyper-ventilated and put all their long-stymied spending plans into their $819 billion version of how to stimulate the economy. Many of those plans are perhaps worthy in themselves, but they do not belong in a stimulus package. How is $400 million for an anti-flu program going to stimulate the economy? Largely as a result (but not entirely), not a single Republican voted for the bill and even 11 Democrats voted against it. Sic transit bi-partisanship.
But the Republicans are not exactly heroes in this mess. It is true that they are winning the propaganda battle about the faults of the House plan, but where are their brilliant ideas? Tax cuts alone are an old and failed story. It is the Republican party that led the way for most of the eight years of the Bush administration, and where did their leadership get us? Broke, is where it got us. At this point, both parties have been pathetic.
As this column is being written, the Senate is on the verge of producing its own version of a stimulus plan. It seems that Senate partisanship is not as strong as it is in the House, so we might get a more restrained and better targeted plan. Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins seems to be one of the more level-headed members of that chamber, and she seems to be playing a leading role. What we need is common sense, and Collins seems to have a lot of it. What we don’t want is bitter partisanship in the House ruining the chances of a sensible compromise bill that Obama can sign.
The loss of Tom Daschle as the nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is a major blow to the new Obama administration. Daschle has a brilliant 30-year record of public service, and he was the right man for the job, especially cobbling together a national health system. But his tax problems forced Obama to accept his friend’s withdrawal for the sake of the new administration’s credibility in dealing openly. Sadly, Daschle had to go, and that seems to be everybody’s loss.
Former Senator George Mitchell, the new special envoy to the Middle East, has just returned from the region. He too is from Maine. What is it in that state that produces such talented, level-headed people loaded with patience? It must be in the genes. But look at what he must handle. Israel has a government in which the prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister each has a different peace plan. Moreover, a general election will be held in a few days in which right-wing parties essentially opposed to peace talks may either win outright or hold the crucial balance of power. The Palestinian territories are in even worse shape. They are run by two opposing groups, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Yasser Arafat’s old Al Fatah. Even Hamas is divided between the Gaza leadership, perhaps more inclined to talk to Israel, and its party bosses resident in Damascus, supported by Syria and Iran, both of which are opposed to talks with Israel. Getting talks going of any kind isn’t going to be easy. But if anybody is up to the job, it’s George Mitchell.
Newsweek magazine says that Afghanistan may turn out to be Obama’s Vietnam. The analogy may seem overdrawn, as we have less than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan compared to the more than 500,000 we had in Vietnam at the height of our involvement. But Obama is thinking of ratcheting up the number of US troops to contain a failing military effort. That is precisely what we did in Vietnam, increasing our numbers incrementally until we thought we were an overwhelming force. We weren’t, and it didn’t work. Obama needs to tread carefully, but in this he has a shrewd companion in Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Finally, the Pope. It seems he doesn’t know much about some of his more controversial bishops, including those who had been excommunicated by the late John Paul 11. A Pope whose native language is German needs to be particularly careful in dealing with wayward bishops, Israel and Holocaust issues. This was not a good week for the Vatican.
Nor has it been a good week for the world. I mean “Well, did you evah?”