“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”
Anonymous U. S. Army Officer
Ben Tre, Vietnam, 1968
Dear Friends,
Perhaps the U. S. Army major said it? Perhaps not. But it's become part of the American lexicon, and describes the zeal of too many combatants in today's battles over the politically convenient and fiscally inappropriate conflated agenda of debt ceiling, deficit reduction, budget cuts, and tax policy.
Not that they couldn't be taken together so as to yield progress on all counts, mind you; but that would only be achievable if the participants in question were united in an effort to deliver the greatest good for the greatest number. You can't get a "grand bargain" when bad faith is at the table.
Such is not the atmosphere in Washington DC these days, nor is it the goal of the Congressional leadership of a party that finds itself captive to its maximalists, who provided the margin of victory in the 2010 election.
Instead, what we have is a 'pitched battle,' where mostly new, mostly Tea Party members have gotten things confused by concluding that their campaign promises, which they characterize as “principle,” trump the simple promise of the Oath of Office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
These rookies on the right have 'friends' across the aisle, many of whom are multi-term members of the House who also come from “landslide districts,” where allegiance to constituent special interests eclipses the duty of serving the national interest and the common good.
And it's not clear that any of them understand that authorizing an increase in the debt ceiling is not tantamount to opening the door to increased spending.
Space is too short and life too long to use this occasion to spell out the antecedents that have brought us to this point in American governance.
Fortunately, two of Washington DC's most astute and thoughtful political scientists and students of the First Branch of government -- Thomas E. Mann and Sarah A. Binder, Senior Fellows at the Brookings Institution -- have just authored an important paper that outlines the principal factors in this regard. It's entitled, “Constraints on Leadership in Washington,” and it's the best, most dispassionate, single piece I've seen on the constellation of elements that we lump under the rubric of “gridlock”“stalemate,” and the like.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/07_leadership_binder_mann.aspx
Binder and Mann explore several pivotal elements, including leadership styles, separated and shared powers, institutional restraints, partisan polarization, and the net effect that these have in today's maddening and mystifying impasse on a matter so central to the “domestic tranquility” and the “general welfare” of the country.
What they have to say won't make you feel better about the status quo, but because they have chosen to generate light and not heat, you'll benefit from their informed, objective analysis of the conditions and the context in which this all occurs.
The claims by obstructionists in this sequence of events are disingenuous, which makes serious negotiation a daunting exercise. And while it is customary to say, “There is more than enough blame to go around,” it is not precisely true.
The linkage between authorizing an increase in the debt ceiling and making decisions about spending, size of government, military expenditures, or the Bush tax cuts is artificial - convenient, facile, and false. It's an easy rhetorical exercise, as was the faux narrative about the nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, or the windfall that would come from higher taxes on private jet owners.
What we have on our hands today is not an authentic competition between two schools of thought on budgetary, fiscal, or tax policy, except at the margins. If that were the case, we would be the beneficiaries because that's what the political process produces when it is operating at its best.
Instead, we have a partisan confrontation about who has the power to do what to whom. That's also part of the political process. But it should never be the basis upon which decisions affecting the full faith and credit of the United States is made.
Experience suggests that asking those newly elected members of the House -- for whom compromise in any form constitutes a violation of principle -- to accept this premise may simply be a 'bridge too far,” a conclusion which their leadership appears to have accepted - some grimly, some with glee.
Ideally, this would be the opportune occasion for transformational leadership, the kind we associate with Churchill, Mandela, or Martin Luther King. But we know better than to wish for that.
On the other hand, a political realist would say this calls for transactional leadership, the style perfected by President Lyndon Johnson and employed recently by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, as Binder and Mann suggest. Alas, I suspect we may be even beyond that point.
So, what might we conclude?
America's greatest deficit in 2011 is not one of leadership; it is the failure of followership, the essential ingredient in the sustainability of a healthy democracy, and without which leadership is powerless. It is the promise of E pluribus unum, the Preamble to the Constitution, and without it, we wouldn't have Social Security, the GI Bill, the Apollo program, civil rights legislation, and a host of other legislative actions that have eliminated some of the worst ills in American society and given us some of our most salient achievements.
We watch this sad spectacle, and are reminded of the observation made years ago by the playwright, Eugene O'Neill:
"We fought so hard against the small things that we became small ourselves."
July 14, 2011
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