06 June, 2012

Wisconsin - And The Rest Of Us

The Democrats refused to allow Walker to serve his full term and then seek the judgment of the voters. They acted throughout as if he were somehow illegitimate. They refused the give-and-take of democratic politics, using emergency measures for non-emergency reasons. And in this, they are, it seems to me, a state-based mirror-image of the GOP in Washington. Just as Walker was quite clearly a far right candidate and implemented an agenda that was predictable from the spirit if not the letter of his campaign, so Obama ran precisely on what he has done in office, despite the crushing emergency he was handed on becoming president. His healthcare reform was not suddenly revealed in a bait-and-switch operation. It was exhaustively debated in the primaries and the fall campaign; ditto the stimulus, a no-brainer for any president looking into a deflationary abyss; ditto ending the war in Iraq; and focusing on al Qaeda in counter-terrorism, rather than social engineering of quixotic proportions in counter-insurgency.

He has done what he said he'd do. And yet he has been treated as illegitimate and utterly unworthy of any cooperation or compromise by the congressional and media GOP. I worry that Ross's prediction of zero-sum scorched earth politics in an era of spiraling austerity is accurate. I worry that the polarization that Obama tried to overcome has now been innoculated by the virus of victory.