My parents bought my brother and me a video game system, allegedly to improve our hand-eye coordination and thus our poor penmanship. They quickly realized that we would play video games at the expense of all else, and set up some rules. The first hour was free. The second hour had to be paid back with an hour of reading. The third hour required two hours of reading, and so on.
I began to wonder if a similar plan might end the government shutdown. The president or Senate could start a clock that ramped up the pressure. Pass a clean continuing resolution today, and Democrats will pass it. Wait until tomorrow, and it must repeal a program important to Republicans. Wait until Monday, and Democrats will demand three things.
Naturally, none of those add-ons would ever come to pass, but they would get some press, push things forward and allow both sides to appear to give things up in the end. Unfortunately, I realized that my brilliant plan has a fundamental flaw even before the politics and media cycles are hashed out. There is nothing hard core conservatives want to keep.
In the past, Democrats could threaten Republicans with cuts in defense spending to prevent cuts in social programs. That dynamic, you may remember, was supposed to prevent the sequester from going into effect. It doesn’t work anymore. With one of their own as commander-in-chief, Democrats have jumped on the defense spending bandwagon. Meanwhile, the “all government is bad government” Tea Partiers have jumped off, leaving the Democrats no leverage.
Prior to President Obama’s election, the Republicans controlled the White House for eight years, including periods where they controlled both Houses of Congress. Shouldn’t there be some signature policy achievement from that time that Republicans would be desperate to keep – the conservatives’ Obamacare? Nope.
The Bush tax cuts, originally meant to sunset in 2010, are now either permanent or gone, along with any leverage. Medicare Part D? The Tea Party would be thrilled to see that go. The lack of negotiations isn’t President Obama’s fault. It’s because there is nothing the Tea Party “wants” except less of everything.
In retrospect, this shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s a natural consequence of putting people in charge of something they don’t think should exist. Would you hire a mechanic who doesn’t think cars should be legal? A surgeon who doesn’t believe in cutting? An engineer who doesn’t believe in physics?
Which I guess is my answer to the “throw all the bums out” mentality so pervasive on social media. There is no need to throw out people like Rep. Scott Peters, who is trying to come up with a plan to end this mess and prevent future ones, or even Rep. Peter King, who fought his own party on the shutdown and aid for Hurricane Sandy. They stand a chance of working together to keep effective governance ahead of other specific policy goals, which they can pursue more patiently. The people who need to go are the ones who don’t believe in governance at all. Show them the door before they burn the place down.
