President Obama pretty much hit the bullseye by having that public dialogue with the opposition party, and by suggesting that there should be more of these meetings in the future. What a relief it is to have an opportunity to see our elected officials actually discussing something substantive, and bringing some meat to the conversation, instead of rerunning the same old, worn out and meaningless talking points they trot out on the talk shows. That's not to say that there was no rhetoric during the Q&A session, but there was definitely a higher level of effort made on both sides to act like grownups and at least try to get somewhere.
Yet, it apparently wasn't enough to make a lasting change in the way things work in D.C. On Meet the Press this morning, there was John Boehner, as unnaturally orange of face as ever, holding firm on the party line and insisting that the GOP have "an obligation to stand on principle". He explained that the American people expect their representatives to do this, and that this is their primary job on Capitol Hill.
That's when I started to yell at my TV. How wrong-headed can a guy be, especially after some really clear and obvious signs from the public that we expect our government to step up their game? Part of the problem, it occurs to me, is that the GOP have gotten confused about exactly which game it is that they are playing.
They seem to think that politics is just a big football game. Maybe it's because of the Super Bowl or something. But they act as if the idea is to have two opposing teams, one playing offense and the other playing defense, with the only objective being to score points for your own team and prevent the other team from scoring.
Which begs the question that, to me, seems pretty obvious: how does that make things happen that need to happen in this country? How does it assist job creation, health care reform, national security, long-term fiscal stability, or anything else? If either party decides to just hold the line and block the other guys for 4 years, waiting until it's their turn to get the ball back and run the kind of plays they want to run, we get nowhere and nothing gets better. You can't just say that you are content to bide time until the other team runs out of downs. That's NOT the job that Boehner and the other D.C. dipsticks were elected to do. They were elected to work out how to fix the problems and meet the challenges that face our nation.
Unfortunately, the GOP feels that protecting their particular ideology is all that matters, and that if the nation as a whole has to suffer a while longer while they protect it, then that's just how it has to be. Now, I'm not here to say that either side needs to just roll over, abandon their beliefs and make nice for the sake of it. But what I truly believe, especially after watching the Q&A session this week, is that there are probably many more areas of common ground between the left and the right than they care to acknowledge, and that many ideas that might actually work are being shunned by Republicans not because the ideas are bad, but because they are being proposed by the Obama administration or the Democrats.
I guess, according to what Boehner says, the Republicans will look back on the Obama presidency as nothing more than an inconvenient speed bump on the road to their next period as the majority party. It will not be a time during which any progress is made, nor will it be a time where the GOP will assume responsibility for any work that needs to be done. All they're there for, from what they're saying, is to stave off as many Democratic efforts as possible and preserve their ideology so it's ready to go when the next Republican Congress and President show up. If this is their definition of leadership, no wonder this country's going down the shitter so quickly.
True leadership is about intelligence, open-mindedness and flexibility. Without those qualities, you can't properly assess a situation, or figure out the best way to deal with it. You have to be able to acknowledge that circumstances are never constant - that there is always some new variable, some unexpected factor, that gets thrown into the mix. An unwavering ideology is never going to be able to provide solutions for all the problems we face. There must be creative thought, there must be cooperation, and there must be mutual effort. Most importantly, that effort must be made on behalf of the nation and not merely to serve a particular party. Otherwise, who benefits? We regular folks just continue to suffer for 4 years while they screw around, and the mess that the next guy (be he a Republican or Democrat) must clean up just gets bigger and bigger. How is this a good result for anyone?
We need to let the GOP know that the football game has to end. We need to change the rules of play entirely to ensure that the interests of the people are what matters, and not the partisan point-scoring. If Boehner and the Republicans continue to defend and excuse their obstructionism by saying it's what they were elected to do, they will fail to truly serve the people who elected them. And as we are seeing at ballot boxes around the nation, voters are quick to discard the people who fail to serve their interests well, regardless of their party affiliation. No one is safe, and no ideology is sacred. People can't feed their families or pay their bills with ideologies. The GOP will need to come up with a better game plan than merely being defenders of the faith, because the nation's faith in politicians who do nothing has finally run dry.
