There are a number of recent events that have left me slightly bewildered. For instance, every time I find myself in Reinert Hall’s laundry room, I somehow return with one or two fewer socks than when I descended into those foul depths. The only explanation I can think of is that they are winging their way toward some kind of sock netherworld, a fact made all the stranger when, recently, two socks returned from the depths.
On a national scale, though, there are far more pertinent bewildering events. Following the president’s announcement of his fiscal-year-2011 budget plan, and the formation of an oversight group to watch government spending, Republicans immediately decided that it would never work, that it would be a figurehead group only, and promptly refused to participate.
Well done, Republicans. You’ve just created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Obviously, a bipartisan group with only one party involved is going to immediately fail, or at least will have so few or so spineless a group of Republicans that it will, yes, fail. That’s the masterstroke of current Republican political strategy, though:pto sit back, insult and watch it all fall down. It’s working well for them, but the common people—you, me, Republicans, Democrats, Independents—are getting screwed. Meanwhile, the Democrats are giving up altogether, and fiddling while their party platform burns, sinks into the mire and is torn apart by wolves.
This is bewildering to me because it seems as though we were promised this would stop happening. It almost did! I dare you to watch the video of the President meeting with the House Republicans Issues Conference and not feel a sort of thrill, a glimmer of hope that maybe this could be the future of politics. These same GOP house members who have been going on about the evils of the administration and pulling the insult-and-wait tactics are sitting down and asking reasonable, well thought out questions of the president. It’s almost unbelievable! Could this be what politics really looks like?
Unfortunately—and this is something I am not at all confused by—we are not that lucky. The problem is that everybody is always trying to get re-elected. This is obvious. The strategy each party decides to use affects the way politics work in this country. The Republicans are doing what they do best: playing to their base. This attracts voters who were already planning to vote for them, as well as independents who agree with the platform/opinions/facial structure—and then they win the Massachusetts Senate race. The Democrats, on the other hand, are trying desperately to win over Republican voters. In doing so, they lose votes from their own base as well as those of independents who are hoping for liberal and progressive opinions.
If you watched the State of the Union address, you might have noticed that rarely did the president mention Democrats and Republicans separately. He wants what we want: a political system in which real work can be done. If that actually is what we want, we need to stop encouraging this ridiculousness. Barack Obama was voted into office because he promised to do just that, but we forgot that just because it is one of his goals, that does not mean everyone else in Congress wants the same thing. Just because the president does not accomplish each and every one of his goals does not mean he is running a failed presidency. The man is trying to steer a plane caught in a crosswind.
But here’s the thing: He’s doing a good job! The plane isn’t on the landing strip yet, but his strides toward bipartisan cooperation are starting to show. Just a little bit. He’s pushing this healthcare bill as hard as he is because he doesn’t want the opposing party to stonewall the other, but at the same time he wants his own party to start speaking up for itself.
If we’re lucky, the Obama-Republican rational conversation that was his talk at the House Republicans Issues Conference is just the first step toward finding a way for politicians to be civil. Speaking, incidentally, of finding a way, if anyone can find a way to locate my lost socks, there may be a reward.
Noah Berman is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences.
