The deficit or unemployment--tackle which first?

The Republican Party leadership and nearly all of its members in Congress don't care about the deficit. They're only using "The Deficit" as a tool to defeat Democrats. They'll abandon it as soon as they regain power.

I'm not reading minds. Just relying on what they did when they were in power.

The Republicans in Congress--especially their leadership--have no interest in deficit reduction, except as a propaganda tool until the instant they regain power.

I don't have to be a mind reader to say this. I just have to remember what these amoral moralizers actually did--as opposed to what they said--when they controlled all three branches of government for six years.

And when they regain power, they've given us no reason to believe they won't take up where they left off: with as much government expansion as Democrats like (only in different areas), enormous tax cuts for the rich, inconsequential tax cuts for the middle class (offset by all the hidden forms of taxation Republicans have become adept at levying), and major belt-tightening for the poor--all adding up to a big ramp-up of the deficit.

They're done this pretty much every time they've gotten into power, justifying it by claiming that if we give the rich what they need to become the ultra-rich, these Masters of the Universe will deign to toss us a few crumbs.

Only they don't. In the recovery from the 2000 downturn, middle class real wages didn't go up--the ultra-rich appropriated pretty much all the increase brought about by the recovery. Turns out feeding greed doesn't satiate it--it just ramps up to take the present largesse for granted as it lusts for more...always more.

So now they're lying. Unless you believe they've had a spiritual awakening as cataclysmic as St. Paul had on the road to Damascus.

None of this means the Democrats in Congress and the White House are angels with halos. It just means that putting the Republicans back in power--even if you believe that deficits are the problem, rather than unemployment--won't get you what you want.

The problem is that cutting spending now is what our intuition tells us to do, and what Professor Krugman advocates is counterintuitive.

But we can't depend on our intuition any more than we can depend on Republican leaders (as opposed to Republican rank and file, of whom I know many, including my spouse, who I would and do trust with my life).

See, our intuition evolved to keep us safe and happy as nomadic hunters and gatherers in the highlands of East Africa 100,000 years ago. It hasn't changed since we started adapting our environment to us instead of adapting to our environment.

Go back to living as a nomadic hunter/gatherer and you'll be able to rely on your intuition. Otherwise you have to take it with a grain of salt.

And here we have to remember that no one is saying "deficits don't matter." You remember who actually said that, right? President Obama is just saying we should be spending now--in specific ways--to get us out of this slump. He never said we could or should do that indefinitely.

The Achilles Heel of the Democrats is that--even accepting liberal economists Paul Krugman's position (tackle unemployment now, then the deficit when the economy has recovered), which I generally do--government employees are generally overpaid relative to their employers in the private sector--us. And that includes unfunded pension time bombs that are starting to bankrupt cities, counties and state governments.

Democrats would do a lot to gain credibility for their position if they tackled this issue aggressively.

Oh, and to those who blame this downturn on Obama--it takes a lot less time to rob a bank than to build such an institution. And the Republicans had six years to loot the treasury, which they did with a vengeance. It will take vastly longer than that to rebuild all the regulatory mechanisms they destroyed as they looted and pillaged--like bank robbers blowing up the alarm system and the safe locks.

They may well persuade enough people that Obama did this to us instead of the Republican leadership. After all, money talks, and the Republicans' paymasters have literally billions to spend on black-is-white up-is-down propaganda.

Limitless campaign spending puts the bullhorns in the billionaires' hands. Obama was able to overcome this in 2008 through adroit campaigning, but a repeat performance will be dicey at best.

Remember what they're saying now!

The leaders of the Republican Party (not Rush Limbaugh but people like Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader in the Senate, and Whatshisname Steele, head of the Republican National Committee) have stated flatly that passage of the Democrats' healthcare reform bill will mean economic, social and moral disaster for America.

They haven't qualified their statements or hedged them the way social scientists do. This means they're saying they have God-class knowledge of what's going to happen.

OK. I call on every registered Republican to mark their leaders' words--and the contrasting predictions of the Democratic Party leadership--and see which comes true through the next several election cycles.

And if the Republican leaders turn out to have been profoundly wrong (as they were about Social Security and Medicare, both of which prompted the same dire predictions), you need to either change the leadership of your party or leave it.

Same goes for the pundits. If the right wing talking heads' predictions prove wrong--why listen to them any more?

Unless they recant and describe what led them to say what they did, and how it's different now.

If healthcare reform does leave the country in a smoking ruin, I promise to help do the same on the Democratic side. Deal?

Above all, remember what everyone is saying now--and hold them accountable for what they say later. Otherwise unscrupulous pols and pundits will speak for the moment without regard for how well-founded what they say is.

Words matter. Predictions matter. Lying matters. And demagoguery really matters.

So say we all.

Evil Republicans

When we Democrats talk about those evil Republicans we're making a big, big mistake. We have to make a clear distinction between the Republican Party leadership and most rank and file Republicans.

I know a lot of Republicans personally, and I've known many of them for decades. Nearly all of them are honest, upright people you could trust with your last dollar. They might not make the best companions for a trip to the Burning Man festival, or to watch some sex/drugs/rock&roll-drenched, plotless avant-garde movie with. But they might be great to go scuba diving with (and I speak from personal experience), or to see a well-made, mainstream PG-13-rated Hollywood movie with. Or to be in a baby-sitting co-op with.

True, they do generally oppose most Democrats on a variety of social and fiscal issues. We are in different parties for real reasons. But few rank-and-file Republicans are out to rob us blind--unlike the GOP leadership.

And when we lump them all together, we reinforce the Republicans' sense of tribe--that America=the Republican tribe, while the Democratics en masse=an occupation of "our" country by people with alien values who hate America and whose leader and representatives must be opposed in every way possible.

When we reinforce this us vs. them mentality, we don't get healthcare reform. We don't get Wall Street reform. Or if we seem to, we get gutted versions of what we really need.

If not for this, there are many issues we could cooperate on, and they'd be more willing to reform their own party. Wouldn't it be great for everyone if the GOP became less like the Party of Palin and more like the Party of Eisenhower?

The first step for Democrats is ceasing to tar all Republicans with the same brush. Always refer to the Republican leadership when that's appropriate. Find the areas of common ground that we share. Republican voters don't want lying, demagoguic leaders shilling for special interests any more than we do. Help them realize our tribe is America, not any political party.

George Washington's farewell address warned the American people about "factions." Prophetic words.

Epigrams

In the second round of the presidential debates, the Democratic contenders sounded like a convention of dewy-eyed social workers; the Republican group sounded like a bunch of old coots at a VFW meeting. And both sounded like a bunch of intelligent people pandering to their base.

In the late Roman Empire, the Roman ruling class diverted the people from understanding how they were being screwed with "bread and circuses" -- "Pan i carnivale." But the Republican leadership figured out how to one-up the Romans--they did it with just the carnivale.

...

Who said there's no such thing as progress?

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Some lefties claim that The Decider is the worst American president ever. I haven't studied every president's life and works, so I don't know whether that's true. Also, it depends on how you define "worst." But I think I'd define it the same way I define "worst movie." To be in the running, the movie has to be a big-budget studio disaster. LIkewise, to be "worst president" a candidate for the title has to be momentous--not just incompetent. Someone with the ambition of a Lincoln or an F.D.R., combined with the mediocrity of a Warren G. Harding.

So let's see. Does Bush II have the ambition of a Lincoln or an F.D.R.? He has said he does--that he wants to be a momentous president...someone who will be more than a footnote in histories of this era. But are his abilities mediocre? He did get a Harvard M.B.A., however hard he works at looking and sounding like a good ol' boy with a Cowboy Cadillac and a Weber in the back yard.

But it seems as though whatever intellect and will he possesses is aimed almost entirely at politics; i.e. at winning elections, along with creating a permanent Republican majority--subordinating every single governmental action, every appointment, every speech anywhere, every public statement--to those goals. Moreover, he has made it clear that he doesn't regard himself as my president, since I'm not a Republican. He appears to want to be the president of 51% of the people, and what the other 49% think means less than nothing to him. Less than nothing because he heaps contempt and derision on us.

I'm not deceived into thinking he's a moron just because he pretends to be one to get the Bubba vote. Nor am I deceived by his governance, which might seem moronic unless you weigh what he's done against the only standard he uses: political victory, regardless of long term effects.

It would be better if he were actually stupid. But he has proven quite capable at politics--at campaigning--by the standards of the yardstick he himself uses.

That said, I believe he is in serious contention for Worst President Ever, though not for the reasons many give...but because he isn't incompetent at what he thinks the presidency is all about: partisan politics uber alles. As a nation we would have balked at his actions if he were less capable. After six years we did balk, but under America's strong presidency setup, he will still wreak even more damage to our economy and our efforts abroad before he leaves.

I'm not saying this as a partisan Democrat, but simply as a fan of competent, principled government.

Lastly, while he has treated the 49% I belong to with contempt, in the long run it's his Republican/Independent majority who will come to revile him most, because those are the people he has actually betrayed--with the active aid of the Republican leadership--subverting nearly every traditional Republican principle and practice in his quest for short-term political gain, all the while giving lip service to everything he's destroying.