By Dave Anderson:
Bernard Finel is in a very understandable funk as it is one that I am in too. There are too many obvious problems and relatively obvious solutions to those problems that are not being debated much less enacted. Vested interests own the country and are able to short the country's stock at the same time. We're engaged in a series of death bets. The big difference between Bernard and I is one of age. I'm more likely to be stuck paying off the death bet and if it is not me and my wife, it will be my daughter's generation who is paying for our inability to govern ourselves within reasonable constraints. But let me give the floor to Bernard:
I am increasingly pessimistic about, you know, everything. The war in Afghanistan, the prospects for some sort of health care reform, the state of fiscal policy, the restoration of rule of law in the United States. And what really gets me is that, I am not sure I care about it.
Afghanistan is a nightmare. We�ll regret the escalation there because we�re pursuing an illusion. We can�t control developments in that country, and in the end we�re probably going to fight for years in order to get to a situation we could have gotten with smart policies much earlier. It is Vietnam, though thankfully an order of magnitude less lethal for American forces.
We just won�t get a health care bill worth a damn. Obama let Congress dick around on it, and lost control of the narrative. The Senate bill is actually okay � aside from idiocies like the Ben Nelson payoff � but the confusion over the process has allowed the GOP to define the bill as socialism. Even sane people like James Joyner are ranting about the loss of �freedom� the bill embodies. Look, the only �freedom� anyone will lose is the ability to free ride on the system. Yes, people who choose to not buy health insurance would be compelled to do so, but last I checked those people still feel free to show up to the emergency room at get treatment when they have an accident. So you have a pool of people who don�t want to pay, but also want the right to treatment on demand. Well, sorry, but that is not �freedom� it is a form of fraud.
The fiscal situation is a nightmare. No one looks good on this one. The GOP thinks tax cuts are ratchet to always be lowered. The Dems are constantly looking for ways to demagogue needed cuts and adjustments into charges of the right-wing being cold hearted. Obama threw away any credibility for fiscal sanity with budgets that project trillion dollar deficits for a decade to come. Well, sooner or later, the crisis will come, and instead of some sort of sane response, we�ll have a crisis response. We�ll soak the rich. We�ll slash programs with little regard to their worth. We�ll get fiscal sanity sooner or later, whether we like it or not, but how we get there will be messy and decidedly sub-optimal.
The rule of law is likely shot, though. Preventive detention is going to become a permanent feature of our republic, as will the principle of immunity of government officials to any personal responsibility for criminal acts. In the name of the �war on terror� we�ve essentially accepted what was once a punch-line as a national policy � �If the president does it, it isn�t illegal.� And just as bad, we�ve decided that the Nuremberg Defense � �I was just following orders� � is legitimate. It would have been hard enough to overturn the Bush Administration�s precedents, it will be essentially impossible to overturn bipartisan precedent from both Bush and Obama.
Our political dynamic is FUBAR. There is no downside to lying, there is no downside to being tremendously wrong, there is no downside to be incomptent or ignorant. Hell, there is only an upside to all of these traits as that allows an opportunist to cast himself as an anti-elitist who would be a great person to get smashed with.
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