Voters Chart a Dangerous Path

What a predictable society we have become. Not only are we guilty of expecting instant gratification of our every wish and quick solutions for problems years in the making, we are delusional about the reasons for our failure. Conservatives deluge call-in programs with partisan talking points as if they were voicing opinions derived in some rational process instead of being fomented in the torrid right-wing spin machine with disciples mobilized to spread the word about everything from health care to Supreme Court nominees.

Persistent rants claiming President Obama is driving the country toward a socialistic, one-world amalgam are made by people who obviously have no idea what socialism is and simply repeat the vituperations of talk-radio hosts. They are misled as well by a cadre of fast-talking self-promoting cable ‘analysts’ who discuss the most profound subjects in a shallow, dismissive manner and who always manage to have the last word.

On Morning Joe recently a guest discussed his documentary about how content-light Supreme Court confirmation proceedings often are. He mentioned, for example, that Judge Roberts had been something less than forthcoming during confirmation giving the impression that he was a moderate of sorts. Once on the bench, however, he went out of his way to deliver a conservative message. Host Joe Scarborough said he disagreed with everything the guest had said about Roberts but then he (Joe) was a conservative and the guest was a filmmaker. The truth is most observers agree that the Roberts who appeared before the Senate was a different creature from the Roberts presiding as Chief Justice.

We knew of course there’d be a fight over the president’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, no matter who it was. The veto machine in the Senate otherwise known as the Republican minority is always hard at work immobilizing that body with secret holds and manipulating issues to force filibuster-proof votes. They have plenty of company in efforts to malign nominee Elena Kagan. Absolutely ludicrous criticisms are leveled at her by a variety of people, many of whom should be relegated to the dustbin of inconsequential talking heads - - people like Bay Buchanan.

Buchanan says the president “dummied down” the Supreme Court by nominating Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, an astonishing pronouncement considering her support of Sarah Palin whom she described as accomplished and “extraordinarily qualified” to be president, and coming on the heels of the eight-year administration of a seriously under-qualified George Bush. Speaking of “dummied down” appointments other than the Supreme Court appointment of Bush in 2000, we have Clarence Thomas who received a minimally-qualified grade from the American Bar Association. But agree or disagree with the Kagan and Sotomayor nominations, saying they aren’t smart is, well, just stupid.

It is hard to imagine that voters stand ready to ‘throw the bums out’ of office and return bums of even greater magnitude in frustration at the nation’s slow rate of progress out of financial distress. Disregarding the previous administration’s failed agenda and believing that tax cuts and unregulated markets will resuscitate a weak economy and ward off creeping socialism represents an impulse to clutch at a huge empty straw. Oddly, political enemies don’t seem to grasp the irony of referring to what they describe as Obama’s failings in terms, as Jon Stewart puts it, of Bush “f**k-ups.” Thus Kagan becomes his Harriet Myers, the BP spill his Katrina and Afghanistan his war. In a desperate attempt to excoriate Obama, opponents run the risk of highlighting the failed policies and offhand governing style of the former president.

The ship of state was foundering long before Obama took office but the quicksand of previous inaction and intransigence was waiting to suck the life out of his agenda. Now, little more than a year later, the public seems to have forgotten the reason for our national distress and, in a wave of misplaced anger inflamed by strident demagogues, have taken aim at the president and all incumbents whether or not they deserve blame. If voters choose to embrace the politics of the past and heed the demon call of the right-wing we will be delivered into the mindless world of Rush Limbaugh.and the party he leads.

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