Andrew Sullivan says:
There seems to me a strong chance that this calamity could be the beginning of something profound in American politics: a sense that government is broken and that someone needs to fix it.
I would like to agree with him.
But here's why I'm worried: it isn't just government that's broken, it's the whole system for changing government that is broken too.
I hope I'm proven wrong, but right now it seems to me that we no longer have the ability to change direction. People may be turning, en masse, against Bush's failure to provide the most elemental of government services, public safety. But that doesn't mean they will turn to the only available alternative, the Democrats, when the next congressional elections roll around 14 months from now.
Two reasons explain that gloomy prediction. First, the right-wing media and money machine is very, very good at attacking anything that smacks as pro-government. In swing districts, Democrats run as pale imitation Republicans, or worse. To get substantial change, we'd need a surge in Democratic turnout (along with a corresponding drop in Republican turnout) that would not only sweep out a great many incumbents, but would also embolden a new wave of leaders to push for change.
This isn't impossible, of course. It happened in 1974, when revulsion with Watergate propelled a whole generation of reform-style Democrats into office. And it happened in reverse in 1994, when revulsion with the congressional check-kiting scandal was the straw that broke the donkey's back and propelled Newt Gingrich's Republicans into power in the House.
But here's the deeper problem. Democrats have to stand for something other than "not Bush"--and there are many reasons to doubt they can. The dirty little secret of Washington insider politics is that both parties benefit from the game. I hardly trust the Democrats to clean up the mess left by the Republicans, do you?
Right now, if the Democrats were a real opposition to Bush, they'd be howling at him for cutting $75 million for Army Corps of Engineers hurricane and flood control projects in the New Orleans district, while signing a $286 billion highway bill that included $231 million for a bridge to an island inhabited by 50 people in Alaska, which is to be named "Don Young's Way" in honor of the House Transportation Committee chairman. When Bush signed the bill, he touted it as a jobs program and ironically claimed, "This bill upgrades our transportation infrastructure and it'll help save lives."
But here's what you have to know about that bill: it passed the House and Senate with almost no opposition. At any point in the process, Democrats could have stood together and objected to a bill that directed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to questionable projects (more than 6,000 by the count of Taxpayers for Common Sense) while shortchanging essential needs like New Orleans flood control. But they didn't.
That's because even the Democrats, who lack all power to initiate action in the Republican-controlled Congress, still get to earmark millions of dollars each to their home districts and then tout those "achievements" to the local press. For example, my congresswoman, Nita Lowey, was just in my local paper bragging about $2 million she got for revamping a highway overpass nearby in Ardsley. Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, another Democrat, loved the highway bill, proudly citing the 30% increase in transportation funding that she secured for her state. Where was she when the Army Corps funding request was turned down? (Thanks to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for noticing that bit of news.)
Why should we trust these Democrats to fix our broken government? They're part of the problem too.
Posted by msifry at September 5, 2005 11:21 PM