The Real Deal?

As we all sit and wait for the curtain to fall on this embarrassing farce I note a couple of things.

First, a number of commentators and analysts are stepping forward to sooth our nerves by describing this mess as not so outrageous after all. They ask us to remember the controversy and vitriol surrounding the civil rights debates, or even more recently the acid of the health care reform arguments. Fine. That doesn’t excuse a nation for acting this way. Nor does it ameliorate the dire consequences of failure. That the line of civility and reason has been stretched this thin is a telling indictment of where we are. It should never have reached this spot Never.

Second, we are now all supposed to hang breathlessly as the Reid plan is worked through the slow and cumbersome machinery of government. This will, we are told, emerge at the very last moment as the savior of our few remaining shreds of honor. But. And this is not only a big but, it is a monumental but: the Reid plan is a massive, epic, and totally unnecessary act of appeasement. It is a Republican plan. A right wing Republican plan to boot. This is not victory. It is not a Solomon like draw. It is not even an honorable defeat. It is abject capitulation to the hostage taking tactics of the extreme right that now, apparently, sets the entire tone and subject matter of discussion.

That a small group of extremists can seize power and dominate policy debate in the midst of a still weak, and getting weaker, economic setting is shocking. The vapid nature of our leadership – at the top of both parties – and the equally lame response to the overt hostage taking tactic of the extremists underlines just how deep our crisis of leadership is.

The Republican leaders had to re-write their own plan in order to squeak it through the House of Representatives. The wafer thin margin of victory is testimony to their inability to rein in their extreme right wing. And even with the re-write they couldn’t persuade twenty-twop of the most hardline extremists to vote with them. The Republicans have lost control of their own party. We have no loyal opposition at the moment. We have an attempted coup in spirit if not in name.

As for the Democrats? I cannot summon enough of my own venom to describe their failure. That an erstwhile Democratic president could present a plan such as the one Obama has periodically talked about is astonishing. Nowhere is there an effort to defend the role of government. Nowhere is there an effort to defend any of the traditional constituents of progressive politics. The retreat from left of center values is stark and almost total. The constant effort to triangulate, a tactic devoid of principle at the best of times, has been perverted. The triangulation is no longer with the attitudes or opinions of voters, it is with the hostage takers of the far right. Never have I seen a leadership so incapable of resisting a forceful opposition. Never have I been more disgusted with that leadership.

Appeasement never worked. It will not work. It cannot work. It must not work.

All this so-called sensible compromise, now working its way through Congress, does, is to set the limits for the next fight over the role of government. Having surrendered once we should expect a series of further surrenders. The far right smells blood. They will not be denied. The welfare state is in full retreat. Led by a Democratic president.

I would never, ever, have imagined that.