US politics unbroken

Aug. 22, 2011
While a US president overtly hostile to the oil and gas industry hit the road last week to blame economic problems on "partisan games," regulators in his administration remained in Washington, DC, to continue their stomping of American business.

While a US president overtly hostile to the oil and gas industry hit the road last week to blame economic problems on "partisan games," regulators in his administration remained in Washington, DC, to continue their stomping of American business.

Obviously hoping to steal attention from the Republican contest from which a presidential candidate will emerge, Obama rode through the Midwest in an armored bus, stopping in rural towns to snipe at the opposition party and deliver his own message.

"We've got a willingness to play partisan games and engage in brinksmanship that not only costs us in terms of the economy now but also is going to place a burden on future generations," the president said in Cannon Falls, Minn. In Decorah, Iowa, he declared, "Our politics is broken."

Obama is trying to capitalize on last month's congressional battle over a budget deal, portraying Republicans as interested more in political ambition than in national welfare. In Decorah he decried "political brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that's more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win."

'Dysfunctional' government

Many media outlets gobble this bait. The assertion that government has become "dysfunctional" is now an unquestioned starting point for the reporting and analysis of much political news.

The message thus becomes that Republicans are obstructionists with nothing positive to offer and that if they'd only get out of Obama's way the country would prosper. All that's necessary in this view are steps—some good, some ominous—described by the president during his bus tour: renewal of the payroll tax cut, creation of an "infrastructure bank," tax credits for companies hiring military veterans, trade deals, patent reform, spending cuts, and the closing of tax "loopholes" on "millionaires and billionaires" and "big corporations."

Other interpretations of events are possible—if less likely to win notice by the press. Here's one: Obama is mischaracterizing legitimate dissent as dangerous intransigence in order to deflect attention from not only the failure of his economic policies but, worse, his refusal to change.

Obama didn't have to unbridle an extremely liberal Congress in the first half of his first term. He did. He didn't have to promote the biggest spending spree by government in American history. He did. He didn't have to shove Republicans aside and act, while his party still controlled both houses of Congress, with abject disregard for the bipartisanship for which he now appeals. He did. He didn't have to appoint liberal activists to key positions in his administration. He did.

Obama in fact tried to jam as much of a very liberal agenda into effect as he, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could as quickly as they could.

So the US now has unprecedented debt and a flawed program of health care reform that Americans, as last year's congressional elections made clear, don't like.

It has a growing list of governmental programs and enterprises that will never yield benefits warranting the costs. And it has a swelling burden of regulation and looming taxation that's making businesses reluctant to invest and hire workers. With regulation and taxes, oil and gas companies have been especially prominent targets.

What's broken?

Obama steered America onto this course. Yes, he inherited an economic crisis, as he still reminds everyone at every opportunity. But those problems could have been addressed with less spending, less regulation, less commitment to political whims such as economically hopeless energy.

Many Americans believe Obama used recession as an excuse to reshape their country to fit a state-centered, European model. Most Americans don't want to be European.

American politics isn't broken. American politics responded sharply to a sharp shove in a direction many Americans find calamitous. If Obama expected anything less, he's more imperious than he acts—and less likely to help the economy by reining in his administration's stampeding regulators.

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