Though Bill Clinton did win reelection in 1996 against a weak Republican opponent (Bob Dole) with the help of a third-party candidate (Ross Perot), Clinton had to confine his second-term ambitions to "micro-programs" and to changes favored by the Republicans, such as the removal of Great Depression-era regulations of the banking system (a "modernization" that set the stage for the 2008 financial collapse).
Investigating Obama
If Republicans gain control of at least one house of Congress, they would surely launch a wave of investigations against Obama, much as the GOP did against Clinton.
Unlike the Democrats who shy away from investigative controversies turning their backs even on historic scandals such as Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate and contra-cocaine trafficking in the 1980s as well as George W. Bush's torture abuses and illegal wars last decade the Republicans have no such qualms.
They pounced all over trivial Clinton "scandals" like Whitewater and Travel-gate and impeached Clinton for lying about sex (though they could not muster a super-majority in the Senate for conviction). And Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, has vowed to be similarly aggressive now if he gains control of the House oversight committee next year. [Washington Post, July 4, 2010]
So, with Obama embattled and the Democratic congressional majorities likely to shrink or disappear, the chances for the United States to confront its structural problems will only worsen.
With unemployment staying high, many middle-class Americans will sink into a growing under-class. The rich will fight to keep as much of their oversized salaries and bonuses as possible, with the Republicans ensuring that the one political sure-thing will be that legislated tax increases won't happen.
Indeed, the simplest way to address the nation's myriad of problems by restoring the marginal tax rates for the rich back to the historical levels of, say, the Kennedy era (around 60 percent on their top income) is the one thing that is almost impossible to contemplate.
Since Reagan's presidency, the Republicans have been determined to "starve" the government of resources so it can't address problems like climate change, renewable energy, education, transportation, health care, housing, etc. The only big expenditure that the GOP won't cut is military spending, especially for overseas wars.
Though the Republican vision of the future appears to guarantee a continued decline in the quality of American life, the Right's propaganda machinery makes any suggestion about the need to tax the rich more heavily akin to socialism. The Revolutionary War slogan, "no taxation without representation," has been transformed to something close to "no taxation, period."
Remember the famous encounter between candidate Obama and "Joe the Plumber," who decried Obama's idea about the need to redistribute wealth from the upper-income levels to middle- and working-class Americans so the economy would work better.
That debate remains at the center of America's economic struggles, as it has been since the Great Depression when income inequality and financial speculation were two key factors in the mass unemployment that followed the Crash of 1929. Two lessons learned were that a strong middle class and reasonable government regulations were necessary for a healthy economy.
New Consensus
That New Deal consensus held until 1980 when a new Reagan-era consensus took hold, claiming that tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy and reduced regulation of corporations were the route to prosperity. A corollary was that the wealthy deserved the lion's share because of their intelligence and hard work.
Reagan and the Right sold many Americans, including large numbers of people from the lower economic strata, on the idea that it was unfair for the government to use the tax system to reverse the consolidation of wealth and the political power that went with it.
However, the counter-argument is that virtually every rich person in the United States has benefited from the investment of taxpayers' money in creating the conditions for business success, from public education of workers, to the transportation infrastructure for shipping goods, to the research and development that opened opportunities in computer technology, medicines and the Internet.
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