By Patricia H. Kushlis
Jon Stewart’s “Rally for Sanity” was the single bright spot in a dismal mid-term election season – one otherwise overflowing with invective, manufactured hates, lies, racial and religious slurs and just about anything else to tear down one opponent or another in a kind of dog-eat-dog scenario that could not have done this country’s democracy proud in the eyes of the world. America watchers abroad are now trying to understand the election's significance and the likely impact on US foreign policy.
The problem is that negative campaigns have proven effective and especially so as they are amplified through prime time television ads – the most expensive and, alas, usually most effective item in a campaign budget. But then, despite the problematic American economy and high unemployment rate, more money was spent - or thrown away - depending on whether one won or lost, on this election than in any mid-term election previously – on both sides of the aisle.
The Tea Party with Fox “News” as the bull-horn spearheaded the attacks beginning in April 2009. Yes, I know this “organization” is in reality a loose coalition of groups of foot soldiers paid for by this country’s wealthy right wing who apparently think it is just fine to deficit spend for a robust military presence abroad and fund social security and Medicare benefits for seniors while shorting the needs of everyone else at home – and by the way, no tax increases to pay for all of this.
You’d think, for starters, these self-proclaimed budgetary conservatives would at least realize that expending 20 percent of the US budget on military solutions abroad to problems that defy military solutions makes no sense financially or otherwise. Sadly, they still don’t get the connection. Certainly the defense contractors who are the greatest beneficiaries would be appalled if right wing voters suddenly did wise up.
The President proposes, but the House disposes
All the fiscal conservative rhetoric to the contrary, research has also shown that this country has normally run larger deficits under Republican administrations than under the Democrats as far back as 1911 perhaps, in part, because Republicans have been allergic to tax increases to pay for the programs they enact.
So much for the canard of reigning in government spending under the Republicans - although who knows how they’ll behave when they take charge of the House of Representatives early next year. It is the House that holds the power of the purse after all but we still have a Democratic President and Senate and the President proposes the programs and projects to be funded.
The Fed
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Board with Republican appointee Ben Bernacke at the helm just announced that it will, in effect, start printing money to try to help jolt the economy out of the doldrums. Interest on US bonds will effectively decrease from almost nothing to nothing. Stock prices, supposedly, should then rise further than they already have. This is a gamble – but given the political realities – what are the alternatives? Unless, of course, American corporations decide to start investing in the US the cash hordes they now sit on.
The Fed’s rationale is that this seems to be the only way to stimulate the US economy. This particularly given the political gridlock come January 2011. Otherwise, the Fed governors apparently fear that the US economy will descend into a Japanese style recessionary spiral that in Japan lasted for years.
If there was a message sent by the voters this election day, it was that they want the politicians in Washington to stop playing political brinksmanship and get down to the business of governing the country.
Fat Chance
As far as I can tell, the Republican Congressional leadership is so bathed in the euphoria of victory of the moment that it’s hard to visualize a metamorphosis from the Party of No to the Party of Maybe since their major goal is to capture the White House in 2012 and they have once again learned that obstructionism serves their own electoral purposes all too well. Nevertheless, can they continue to behave as irresponsibly as they have during the past two years after they become part of the government and not have their behavior come back to haunt them in 2012?
Sure, this was yet another “throw the rascals out” kind of election but polls also showed that Republican incumbents had lower approval ratings than their Democratic colleagues and both are held in lower in public esteem than the President.
Which Witch?
Yet despite all the sound and the fury, this was not an election that was a clear victory for the Tea Partiers. It was, nevertheless, a resounding defeat for California’s self-financed private industry billionairesses. Yes, some Tea Partiers (and likely more Republicans with Tea Party endorsements) will appear on Capitol Hill, but voters showed the most outrageous and visible ones like Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell and Nevada’s Sharon Angle the door.
From what I saw, several candidates of the right who drew the most national media attention failed to deliver the vote on Tuesday. And if Palin’s pick Joe Miller loses the Alaska Senate race to Palin’s nemesis Lisa Murkowski there’s one more Tea Party favorite to bite the dust. The greater the media attention and public scrutiny, the poorer, it seems, several of these neophytes did.
As far as California’s two high profile Republican mogulesses goes, Meg Whitman for Governor and Carly Fiorina for the Senate, there is such a thing as too much self- financed exposure and hype for these two underqualified candidates who thought they could simply buy the offices despite a paucity of government experience and questionable personal track records.
A Tea Party ride to Capitol Hill?
Yet will the Tea Partiers who did ride to victory, dismount from their horses on Capitol Hill dressed in 18th century costumes brandishing copies of a US Constitution that contains only the first ten amendments or Bill of Rights, a document they don’t seem to understand and likely not have read?
One question that will need answering is how the Republican political establishment will deal with their new Sarah Palin look-alike colleagues who did make the legislative cut. Will the party and its corporate interests be able to control the new brand of renegade Jim De Mint clones? Or will the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells themselves swing more to the right in response? Will the tail wag the dog, or the other way around?
After all, the Junkers and other conservative elements of Inter-war Germany thought they could control Hitler - but history demonstrated the reverse to be true. Who will, then, win the battle to control, not the US, but the Republican Party?
A pro- or anti- Obama referendum? Or something else?
Some observers have characterized this election as one between the Washington political elite and the rest of us unwashed masses elsewhere in the country. I don’t think so. I think the election is more about an unemployment rate that is stuck at 9.6%, a record number of home mortgages underwater depressing the depressed housing market further and contributing to the construction slump.
Others claim it was a referendum on the Obama Presidency. The Republicans tried to make it a referendum on Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and now claim it’s a repudiation of the current administration. Yet, a Pew poll of registered voters taken shortly before the election suggests that although 54 percent of the voters polled did perceive these mid-terms as a referendum on the President they split almost evenly between the pro- and anti-Obama camps.
So what was it? I still think this was an election about the economy with unemployment at the top of the dissatisfaction heap.
Lest we forget, this little problem arose from banking irresponsibility and lack of regulatory oversight that reached its apex during the “go-go” Bush administration, and a federal government that is perceived to have bailed out the banks and companies like GM but ignored the plight of everyone else. Actually, without the bank bailout (hello there, TARP was begun by the Bush administration as a Republican Party handout to the wealthy but continued under Obama), the recession would have quickly turned into a depression with devastating effects.
And in any event, if I recall correctly, a lot of the money has been repaid: In short, bankers don’t like government control. Besides, I’ve read that financial recessions take longer recovery times than more garden-variety ones. This one was a doozy.
Widening wealth gap disparity
In a new book entitled Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of UC Berkeley and reviewed by columnist Bob Herbert in the New York Times on November 1, 2010 the ever increasing disparity of America’ rich and super rich versus everyone else hinges not on the results of globalization and technological changes but policy changes that “overwhelmingly favored the very rich” begun during the late 1970s regardless of political party in power.
In essence, “big business mobilized on an enormous scale to become much more active in Washington, cultivating politicians in both parties and fighting fiercely to achieve shared political goals. This occurred at the same time that organized labor, the most effective force fighting on behalf of the middle class and other working Americans, was caught in a devastating spiral of decline.” The counter-weight to big business was, therefore, lost.
As a consequence, deregulation, changes in industrial relations policies affecting labor unions and corporate governance policies that allowed CEO’s to “basically set their own pay” were more important to creating the hyper concentration of wealth and income in a tiny sliver of the monied interests than the effects of globalization and the technological revolution. This has also, Packer and Pierson argue eroded the ability of the government to respond to the needs of the middle and lower classes.
Sadly, these trends are unlikely to change much anytime soon. The Fed's even easier money policy (which isn't to say it shouldn't do it) will not directly or immediately help those who need help the most - and unless the Republican Party changes its spots - business as usual will continue to be business as usual on the east bank of the Potomac until further notice.