28 Jun On the Debate
Watching last night’s presidential debate, my reactions ran the full gamut of emotions.
In part, I was sad.
For decades, Joe Biden was one of the least agreeable people in Washington: arrogant, smug, and generally pricktastical. People forget this now, given what he’s become, but he was once among the nation’s least likable permanent political fixtures. At the same time, though, he was (and is) a man who has suffered an unfathomable amount of loss, which more than earns him some sympathy, in spite of himself.
In any case – sympathy or not – no one deserves what is being done to him right now. It really is heart-wrenching. Watch this clip from after the debate last night and then tell me you don’t just feel awful for him. That poor man.
In part, I was angry.
Anyone who has dealt with a loved one in that condition – and I know there are many of you, probably most of you – knows that what is being done to him is not just unfortunate. It is unkind. It is downright cruel.
My father-in-law – whom I eulogized here – suffered from a potent combination of Alzheimer’s and combat-induced PTSD. Now, I was blessed with a father-in-law who was as much an influence on and hero to me as my own father. If someone had tried to use him – in the early but noticeable stage of his disease – for their personal or political purposes, I might have tried to tear them apart with my bare hands. Seeing what they are doing to Joe Biden – and by “they,” I mean, in part, the people who should be protecting him, tearing others apart – incenses me.
I am also, not coincidentally, incensed at what they’re doing to us, the American people. They know he’s not fit for office. They’ve known that for a long, long time. Yet they’ve lied to us about it continually. They’re still lying to us about it. This is so grotesque and so treacherous that I can hardly articulate it. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, the willingness of the Democratic powers that be to sacrifice the standing of the United States on the altar of their own political control has to just about make your blood boil. It’s obscene.
Finally, last night’s debate made me feel, well, vindicated.
Yes, yes. I’ve been telling you for at least two years that Joe Biden would NOT be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024. And that prediction appears closer to actualization today than at any moment yet. But that’s not even what I’m talking about, not really. For more than a quarter century I (and “we” before that) have been writing about the slow but steady collapse of the two major political parties in this country. Twelve years ago, I wrote the following, in which I declared the GOP officially dead and re-asserted my expectation that the Democrats would follow suit shortly. Please forgive the long quote. This story is important:
We’re not sure that you’ve heard, but this election is over. Mitt Romney has lost it. Again. We are, at this time, unable to reveal the current cause of his loss – maybe because it hasn’t happened yet; maybe because the media hasn’t yet decided what it will be; who knows? – but we know that this week, like last, he will lose the race. Again. He loses it every week, you see. Groundhog week. And then, when he refuses to panic or go away, he loses it again the next week….
In any case, we suspect that the reason he will lose this week will have something to do with the first presidential debate tomorrow night. He will lose the debate. Or he will win it, but not by enough. Or he will win it by a huge margin, but then he will come across looking smug, or condescending, or rich, or racist, or Mormon, or something else that is sure to cause people not to like him. By Friday, it will all be over. Again. And then we’ll start fresh next Monday. The alarm clock will ring and Bill Murray will get out of bed and . . . well, you know the rest.
At this point, you might be wondering why we care. After all, we have been predicting all year that Romney will lose. So, why is it a big deal that the media is simply saying the same thing?
Normally, we would begin an answer to such a question with something along the lines of, “well . . . it’s complicated. But we won’t do that this time. Because it’s not….
Most observers, when they discuss what is likely to happen after the election, presume that the status quo will hold. They presume that Obama will win reelection, that he will come back to Washington and get back to work on “the people’s business,” and that the Republican Congress – chastened by Romney’s defeat – will get back to work with him. The two parties will continue pretty much as they always have, except with a little more pragmatism on both sides and a little more sense of urgency as well….
Norman Ornstein, a prominent political scientist and a resident scholar at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, is just absolutely convinced that if everybody does what he is supposed to do this fall, then come next winter, the Republicans, whom he blames for the dysfunction in Washington, will rediscover their pragmatic spirit and will work hard to do what they know is right. Right “for whom,” Ornstein doesn’t say.
And that’s the conflict, as we see it.
All of those who are predicting a return to the status quo after this election are people and/or institutions who have enormous stakes in said status quo. From the media, which is insisting that the election is already over and that Romney might as well quit now; to the Washington insiders, who just want to get back to the way things used to be before the stupid Tea Partiers and their annoying grassroots BS came along and messed up everything, especially the gravy train; to the President of these here United States himself, who desperately wants not just another four years, but another four years in which he is able to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, without having to compromise with or – HEAVEN FORBID! – actually having to deal with the lowly and unpleasant masses of Congresspeople down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. They all have a stake in the system as it is. They are all part of the ruling class as it currently exists. And they all like it that way. And they all want the rest of the ruling class to shut up about “the base” and “the people” and get back to running the country the way it should be run….
People are dumb. Republicans are evil (for wanting smaller government and lower taxes, of all things!). New media – e.g. the internet and cable – is also evil. And the only way back to perfect harmony is to restore the proper role of the elites, like us (i.e. Ornstein and Mann) and the real media. That’s the way it should be, and that’s the way it will be. “We know that if powerful opinion leaders speak honestly and bluntly, political leaders will respond.”…
Except that that’s not how it will be. Ornstein may not know it. After all, he has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. And our pal President Obama may not know it. And all of the talking heads and pundits blathering on about what will and will not happen in the (likely) second Obama term may not know it. But the status quo as it once existed is over. And it is never coming back. “Business as usual” is no longer an option. And much to Ornstein’s dismay – though we doubt he’d ever have the insight to see it, much less admit it – it is the fault of the “elites.” And the media war on the truth, which he tacitly endorses and which declares the Romney candidacy dead on a weekly basis, is merely exacerbating the problem, hastening the end of the world as they know it.
The conventional wisdom has it that after the election, the partisanship will calm down. The Republicans, as we said, will be chastened and, equally important, the political and campaign guys will leave the White House for good and decamp back to Chicago, looking for the “next big thing” and leaving the President to focus on policy rather than politics.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is nuts. Rapprochement is, quite simply, never gonna happen….
[T]he 2012 presidential election will mark the end of the old partisan order and the rise of the new order, whatever it may be….
The catalyst among Republicans is likely to be Mitt Romney himself….
As for the Democratic Party, we suspect that the reckoning is a little further off. But it is coming nonetheless. As (the economist Herb) Stein’s Law has it: something that cannot go on forever won’t.
Mitt Romney represented the last hurrah for the establishment GOP. Joe Biden represents the same for the Democrats. The Democratic Party is now fully broken. Whether it nominates Biden to run in November or not, it will never be the same. It’s done.
And so, for the moment, am I.
