Michael Lind has a nice piece over at Salon, pointing out that the Tea Party nation has a distinctly southern tinge. Yet it was the Tea Party in Massachusetts—Scott Brown’s election to the Senate to replace massively flawed liberal icon Teddy Kennedy—not the Tea Party in Texas, that has the Obama Administration dazed and confused. Since that unanticipated disaster, the Obama Administration has spent its days in mad pursuit of the middle ground, which middle ground keeps wildly receding to the right.
There’s no doubt that President Obama sustained a massive defeat in the whole debt ceiling affair, wasting endless hours to put together a humiliating package, essentially dictated by a minority of the majority of one house of Congress. Yet the savagery of the Tea Party crew could have no triumph without the mushiness on the left. Why doesn’t the President simply stand tall and kick some ass?
Because he can’t. Liberals have far less to offer the American people than they believe. Smart people like Paul Krugman are beside themselves because the President won’t “defend” Social Security—won’t insist on an absolute “no cuts” policy. All we have to do is double the existing FICA tax on employers and employees and we’re home free! That’s all!
That’s all? How are twenty-somethings going to react to a doubling of their FICA tax, particularly when many of them believe that Social Security won’t exist for them? It’s disappointing that Krugman, and others, refuse to admit that substantial savings—and when I say “substantial,” I mean hundreds of billions of dollars a year—can be achieved by cutting federal spending. Liberals love to argue that, compared to other nations, the U.S. tax burden is shockingly low. Well, so it is, but that argument has zero traction with about 75 percent of the American electorate. In fact, there is massive waste at all levels of government—defense in particular—which Democrats refuse to acknowledge, though they do have an excuse. The Republicans are no better. We cut taxes! You cut spending! Fifty-fifty! Fair is fair!
I can sympathize with President Obama up to a point. Circumstances determine men far more than men determine circumstances. Sun Tzu tells us, in the Art of War, that when the enemy advances, we retreat, and that a successful general does not create his opportunities—he recognizes them. Where are the President’s opportunities? I don’t see them. I see that he has capitulated entirely to the institutionalized right—the Pentagon and the CIA in particular—on civil liberties* and the forever war in Afghanistan and wherever else it is that we’re blowing up innocent people. I see that his Hyde Park dreams of a Green America—“smart growth,” high speed rail, solar panels, yada, yada, yada—have vanished. And I can’t see much difference between President Obama and President Romney. If Michele Bachmann gets the Republican nomination, Barack might have a chance. So that’s his opportunity.
*It’s clear that no American politician believes that advocacy of civil liberties is a vote getter. Scott Brown won in Massachusetts on a “Lock ‘em all up forever!” platform. End of story.
