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President Obama's Apparent "Fiscal Cliff" strategy is the latest example of how clever political tactics are pushing conservative principles over the edge.
"I honestly believe that God put the
Republican Party on earth to cut taxes" --
the late Robert Novak, conservative syndicated columnist.
I
once had a good friend named Cliff. He's
gone now, having passed away a few years ago. So, with all the talk of late about a fiscal
cliff, quite naturally my old friend has been on my mind a bit more than usual
over the past week or so. One of the
things I recall about him was how often he would express the notion that "game
recognizes game." It implies that anyone
who's got "it" -- an unusually high level of musical skill, for example -- would,
on sight, instantly recognize others who share the same skill level.
Today, I'm wondering how Cliff
would have felt about a condition which defines the flip side of this
notion: the " Dunning-Kruger Effect ." It describes those who are incapable of
recognizing mastery and technique in others because of an inability to recognize
the magnitude of what they themselves
don't know.
Knowing Cliff, he perhaps would
have simply called it the "Goober Effect."
But whatever it may be called, it's a condition that seems to have
gripped President Obama's legislative opponents over the past four years. After all, in politics deft demonstrations of political
savvy are nothing new. But the way Obama has been legislatively
pimp-slapping his GOP opponents over the past four years is nothing nice. We're told that politics is a science. If that's so, then where have the GOP's
political atom-splitters been holed up during Obama's first term? How many more ways can the president politically
outfox his adversaries? And how many
more times will his opponents consent to chump themselves by playing Charlie
Brown as the president plays "Lucy" with the political football?
Now, in any mix of varied
sorts, I'm neither the most keen-eyed nor sharpest wit; but I'm smart enough to
recognize ignorance when I see it. And
from where I see it, the GOP has suffered greatly from its inability to
"recognize game" in the context of the president's political savvy and
therefore refused to accept the possibility that a "community organizer" might
be capable of repeatedly outsmarting their Party's seasoned politicos. And the outcome of this has been a domino
effect of conservative cultural setbacks being bowled over in tandem with a changing
American social/cultural landscape.
Without a doubt, backlash
against GOP extremism played a significant role in the president's legislative
successes. It was part of the public's response to a discernible
form of extremism that resurfaced like a recurrence of cancer during Obama's
presidency. An extremism fueled in large
part, by a familiar obsession linked to a well-known character disorder common
among the stiff-necked Archie Bunker types, closeted MILF-wannabees and other
assorted " Akinites " who
-- during the Republican presidential debates and convention -- either cheered
or booed at precisely the moment when the opposite reaction was more appropriate.
And certainly, despite Obama's
successes, all's not rosy. Gitmo is
still up and running; efforts to address global warming have been paltry; the
"crackdown" on Wall Street depressingly light-handed; efforts to regulate gun
ownership non-existent and the Bush tax cuts for the rich have managed to
survive this president's first term.
Moreover, any saintly aura enshrouding Obama's milestone accomplishments
would be considerably dulled if the president agrees to the kind of Medicare
and Social Security changes Republicans have been demanding.
Nevertheless, the transcendent
nature of the era of Obama can neither be reasonably understated or adequately embellished. In both political and social terms, it's been
an era of genuinely tangible historical milestones brought forth in large part by
way of an approach to legislative politicking that seems almost pathological in
its cageyness
The enactment of "Obamacare," for
example, toppled 40 years of stonewalled GOP resistance to government run
health care. On immigration, a clear
path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants has been established. The creation of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau may usher in an era of consumer protection that is
contemporary to a post-Wall-Street-meltdown market, and, an historic expansion
of civil rights relating to gender appears on the way to
fruition.
Moreover, not only has Obama
appointed two pro-choice women to the Supreme Court, thus increasing the odds
against Roe v Wade being overturned, his re-election is likely to bring an end
to the conservative dream of a lasting
Supreme Court majority should one or more Justices retire before
the next election.
And perhaps the greatest
milestone is that he did it while black.
Be that as it may, Obama hardly
seems content to stand pat on a transformative agenda and just float on through
the next four years as a lame duck. Indeed
as both Parties edge nearer to the fiscal cliff, Obama appears on the verge of
completing yet another act of shrewd political maneuvering that enables the
president to address deficit recovery largely on his own terms. And through this maneuvering the president
-- at the time of this writing -- is perhaps only days away from crumbling
another pillar of conservative philosophy: the ideological barrier that surrounds a near quarter
century prohibition against raising taxes by the GOP.
"Raising rates is sort of a
partisan political trophy for Obama," admitted Sen. Lindsay Graham during a
December 10 interview on Fox News.
It is; but rightly so. That's because it would be yet another truly remarkable
milestone. Forget Reagan's "thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow
Republican" canard. For more than a
generation "NO NEW TAXES!" has been the GOP's true "11th
Commandment." Not since the George H.W.
era has a Republican president or member of Congress voted to raise taxes. It's a pre-Grover Norquist orthodoxy that for
many years has helped the GOP win election
after election both locally and nationally and which they used
to run on in 2012.
