Glenden BrownThe Old Order Has Broken Down
One of the stranger outcomes of the Bush years has been the complete collapse of the old order of American politics. Bush’s utter incompetence in terms of actual policy and his virulently aggressive big government conservatism has shattered the Reagan coalition. The old liberal-conservative axis has been destroyed. The Bush administration and its Republican allies and cronies embrace of patently anti-American attitudes and behaviors, attacks on civil liberties, and abuses of power have shattered the old agreements on how American leaders should act; there is no going back.
The old order is gone, swept away in a flood of extremism, evangelical certitude and platitudes, arrogance, and narrow mindedness. The breaching of New Orleans levees by Katrina was a symbolic moment when it became painfully clear that old ways were irrevocably gone, that the system has utterly failed.
The blame, although it is tempting, is not entirely Bush and the Republicans. Democratic leaders took a long time to wake up to the realities of today’s Republican party. Tom Daschle, a fundamentally decent man, simply could not believe that things were as bad as they were and he refused again and again to lead, he refused again and again to do the right thing. And he lead a Democratic caucus in the Senate that was largely paralyzed by fear - infected by it, abandoning the roots of the Modern Democratic party in the memorable words of FDR that has nothing to fear but fear itself, unreasoning fear. These leaders, secure in their own prejudices, simply did not believe that the other side was so utterly lacking in morals and so they themselves sold their morals for tin. They failed to be leaders and instead were simply part of the pack. The courage and judgement of Hillary Clinton was ultimately a judgement based in timidity - a timidity that has characterized an entire generation of Democratic leaders and has led them again and again to avoid confrontation, to compromise their core values, to sell themselves to the lowest bidder.
The Bush presidency has been, for the worse, a turning point in which the old ways of doing things and relating to one another and world and the old values have been utterly shattered, destroyed, trashed and thrown aside. The ends of eras are never easy times. Awash in uncertainty, the forces of yesterday, the forces addicted to a no longer extant status quo, will rally desperate to hope things didn’t change. The Bush presidency has been the sudden and painful end of an era, a drunken binge of reckless assertion and arrogance and fear.
The old order has broken down and we must now create new ways of doing and being America. In some sense, we have George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to thank. They’ve been so very wrong about everything, they have yet to get any policy right. Without their unbelievable lack of competence, we would not have the painful opportunity we now have to bring America closer to her original dream of a land of justice, opportunity, liberty, equality and the common good.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:02 am
The usual interpretation goes like this:
(1) Republicans say government is the problem, not the solution.
(2) Republicans take power, become the governing party.
(3) They make a mess of things, “proving” that government is bad and corrupt.
(4) People wake up, realize that Republicans in government are the problem, throw Republicans out.
(5) Return to step (1).
August 30th, 2008 at 10:44 am
This site is degenerating into the same hack politics that we see in the media, the closer the election looms.
Que the violins, Glendon we are still living in the country that elected Bush twice. The reason for that is that progressive America has no appeal to mainstream America. That the extreme left cannot find some rational middle basically forces people repelled by progressive politics and personalities into the arms of right wing extremists. If you fail, your own politics create the reverse image in who comes to power. You exist within a fringe minority, that attracts the fringe nuts to oppose you on the other side. The evangelical Christians and evangelical progressives (non deistic) are a match made in heaven, er, hell rather.
That the rational middle has, and can stomach either side of it is a testament to the tolerance and forgiveness of the average American. Someday we’ll be rid of both sides of the lot, and then we could get some reasonable governing done.
The people would rather be lied to and robbed as have some pointy headed government manage their lives toward some social utopia. Sad choices but it is how the electorate is channeled into bad choices. There cannot be Bush but for the loony left.
I am starting to think it is a physical law.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Glenn,
Whatever you mean by the mainstream, I’m thinking its counter part is the other half the voters.
Which one of us is mainstream?
Or are you trying to defend the idiots in Alaska that elected Palin?
August 30th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Progressives are not mainstream. The better part of them are socio-communist statists.
Those of them that know what that means. Socialist ideas don’t fly well in America. Especially when no one is starving.
Cliff by now, you are well known as total fringe. This site is a fringe site.
Watch the election now that there is someone in it that is actually representative of the people. People will like her, apart from those that are already voting Obama no matter what.
You mean the idiots that have seen their dividend checks get bigger? Or the republican idiots within her own party that she helped send to jail? She has been a big success in her way, which isn’t the beltway way. Thank God someone for real has appeared in politics.
I was beginning to think we had completely devolved into a hackocracy.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:49 am
Richard Warnick’s comment is perfect.
Who is watching the watchers is standard right wing name calling that is absent of fact and logic.
August 31st, 2008 at 5:15 am
Oh, but Mike, don’t you know Who is watching is INDEPENDENT?
Yeah, right!
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Glendon,
Where you see sea change, I see pendulum swings.
Swings to the left in the 30s and 40s, right in the 50s and early 60s, left in the 70s and 80s, right again in the late 90s - 00s.
Sometimes it’s a BIG swing: FDR, the Reagan Revolution. Sometimes it’s little.
I don’t see this as the end of an age - just a natural progression.