Grand Strategy for a Divided America

[tomahawk6]

Tomahawk: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my earlier question, and also on ERC's post that America is neither mainly "liberal" nor mainly "conservative" but just very badly divided and entrenched.

ER: I share your concern over low voter turnout (and let's NOT get smug and point any fingers at the US...). When the "average person" doesn't turn out to vote, the extremists and their supporters always will. In this way, a democratic process can be hijacked by the Left or by the Right, with IMHO equally nasty results. The morning after, everyone wakes up and says: "How did THAT happen?"

You would be correct about division within the country.The numbers that are floated is 40% Dem,40% Republican/Conservative and 20% up for grabs.Last cycle what hurt the Republicans was that there wasn't alot of excitement for Romney.Republicans stayed home just like they did when McCain ran.I would say that the US as a whole is more conservative than Canada. ;D

 

[a_majoor]

ERC:

That seems to me to suggest that your median group is closer in outlook to Thucydides and Reaganesque in the sense that government is generally seen as a problem and not a solution.  Is that an overstatement?

It also suggests to me that when the inevitable happens, as Maggie predicted, the supply of other peoples' money dries up, that there is a strong cadre that might find Detroit to be an attractive outcome.  That is to say it puts the community back in the hand of its citizens because it is no longer attractive to those that would purport to supply services to the citizens for attractive stipends.

These would seem to be a less extreme version of the survivalist phenomenon that actually looked toward "the end of civilization".  They have in common a dislike of the status quo and an acceptance of their personal inability to modify it.  They differ in the extent to which they remove themselves from society and the size of the community they consider optimal.

I think Edward has hit on a key issue in most Western societies at the present time: People are interested in local issues that they, themselves can actively influence. (This also ties into the themes of the "Culture Wars", Culture as the basis of society, and the idea in Classical Liberalism of society being based around "small platoons").

The TEA Party movement in the United States is an attempt to move this philosophy up the food chain, and with 30 US Governorships and State Houses in Republican hands there may be a nugget of truth to this. As we see today, with a relative handful of TEA Party movement members actually sitting in the House and Senate, there is little that can actually be done about the bigger issues. Despite 60% or more of Americans who actively dislike or oppose Obamacare, there just are not enough votes in the Congress to express the "Will of the People" and overturn the legialation (much less defund it), and I'm not sure there are enough members of the TEA Party movement to continue to knock off sitting and party approved political candidates against the entrenched and well funded and organized opposition of the political class and their rent seeking clients. The stakes are simply too high for the political class to allow the TEA PArty movement to gain traction, much less win.

 

[pbi]

...I would say that the US as a whole is more conservative than Canada. ;D

Having lived in the US and spent a fair bit of time serving alongside US folks in various places, I'd agree in general terms, although I learned over the years that the US is not a monolith: there are quite a few regional and sub-regional variations and differences. Exactly the same is true of Canada: there is even a rough correspondence in some ways between the two "Easts", the two "Midwests" , and the two "Left Coasts". We don't have a "South" in the way the US does, so that dynamic doesn't really exist for us.

I have to say that we wonder sometimes about the differences that do exist. For us, for example, having a female or non-white head of state  is really old news now. A few people whinged about our last two Governors General (Chinese Canadian female and Haitian Canadian female). We've only had one female PM, but I can't imagine race or gender being a significant issue there either. It seems to me that these would in fact be very significant issues for the US: witness the amount of ink spilled on both the Left and the Right in the US about Pres Obama's origins and race.

I think you are particularly correct where the public/political influence of religion is concerned. While the overwhelming majority of Canadians who claim a religious affiliation are Christians, we remain highly suspicious of any political party that begins yelling too loudly about imposing any particular set of religious beliefs on the public. Even the current Tory government, who historically have had Christian religious fundamentalism in their constituency, are fairly careful to tone that down, and to shut up the more extreme book-burners in their ranks.

This is an interesting outcome for a country that in its history has had two "established" Churches: first the Roman Catholic Church (still the single largest denomination) and then  the  Church of England (known as the Anglican Church of Canada).

 

[tomahawk6]

Then there is Vancouver,BC.When I first visited there in the 70's Americans weren't very welcome,unless you happened to be a draft dodger.
I mentioned this once to a Canadian colleague and he chuckled saying " hell Vancouver doesn't much care for the rest of Canada".Yet I never felt hostility in the Yukon or Toronto.

 

[JorgSlice]

Then there is Vancouver,BC.When I first visited there in the 70's Americans weren't very welcome,unless you happened to be a draft dodger.
I mentioned this once to a Canadian colleague and he chuckled saying " hell Vancouver doesn't much care for the rest of Canada".Yet I never felt hostility in the Yukon or Toronto.

That's why I moved back to Alberta. Vancouver is toxic.

 

[Kirkhill]

That's why I moved back to Alberta. Vancouver is toxic.

Same here.

Having said that, and having spent a good number of years running up and down I-5, I have to say that there isn't a lot to choose amongst Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.  Now the places in between, and back over the passes, those are different matters again.

 

[pbi]

Then there is Vancouver,BC.When I first visited there in the 70's Americans weren't very welcome,unless you happened to be a draft dodger.
I mentioned this once to a Canadian colleague and he chuckled saying " hell Vancouver doesn't much care for the rest of Canada".Yet I never felt hostility in the Yukon or Toronto.

True, and true.

 

[cupper]

Much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree with Ms. Rubin in her latest opinion piece.

Bubble Wrap conservatives

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/09/30/bubble-wrap-conservatives/?hpid=z3

In his book “Coming Apart,” Charles Murray has a quiz intended to gauge how isolated from the average American’s culture the reader is. I often wonder if right-wing pundits and politicians from deep-red states should take that sort of quiz to gauge how isolated they are from the average American’s politics or lack thereof.

Do the right-wingers know and interact with people who don’t know who the secretary of defense is? Do they have close friends who don’t read the newspaper? Do they have neighbors who have no idea who Bill Ayers, Lois Lerner and James Rosen are? Do  they ever spend an entire weekend without talking or reading about politics? Are they a member of a church or synagogue in which almost all congregants are not conservative?

If they were, and they fully understood there are more Americans like that (by far) than watch the Fox evening line-up on any given night or have ever heard of their favorite conservative blog, it might help re-orient their thinking just a tad. They might also understand that people who hold views closer to the president’s than to Jim DeMint aren’t the “enemy” or part of the infamous 47 percent; they are neighbors, friends, colleagues and acquaintances who need to be wooed, not denounced.

Currently, it seems that a great many right-wingers who claim to speak for “ordinary Americans” don’t have a clue how they react to politics or about the overwhelming disgust they feel when they watch sniping and political grandstanding that winds up disrupting ordinary people’s lives. If they did they might learn:

- No matter how many ads Ken Cuccinelli runs lauding his prosecution of human traffickers, most women in the state are turned off not only by his positions on issues such as contraception but by his persona as an ideological warrior. [I can definitely attest to this, been inundated with Cuccinelli ads all summer, and his Lt. Gov. running mate is so far in the conservative religious right spectrum, Pat Robertson looks reasonable.]

- No matter how many times Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) says it’s the president who is inflexible, most Americans will regard the senator as the more polarizing, unreasonable figure if the shutdown happens.

- No matter how many times they tell one another that the party needs a stronger conservative who is more dogmatic and articulate, the presidential electorate isn’t going to embrace him or her, and, moreover, is going to choose the candidate they like more and identify with on some level.

In their partisan bubble wrap, partisans (on both sides) delude themselves into thinking that ideology — not personality, abstractions, experience, process or substance — resonate with most voters. The opposite is true. This doesn’t mean that ideology, abstractions and process are unimportant — especially to the base — but they can’t substitute for much less partisan concerns.

Partisans also don’t fully appreciate that voters can have contradictory impulses. They can oppose action in Syria and be very upset when an American president doesn’t do what he said he would. They can be in favor of getting rid of Obamacare and dead set against a shutdown to achieve it. They can think the president is in over his head and still think Republicans are responsible for a budget stalemate.

Even more harmful is the tendency to rewrite history to fit their own narrative. Right-wingers are convinced Bill Clinton lost the 1995 shutdown battle. They are certain Ronald Reagan would never compromise on important issues, and that his personality was a trivial part of his success in reaching beyond the conservative base. Naturally they don’t learn from the past when they refuse to recall it accurately.

In the 1970s, Richard Nixon dubbed ordinary Americans turned off by soft-on-crime, anti-war, counter-culture liberals as the “silent majority.” Republicans today are in danger of ceding the silent majority to the Democrats. Republicans need to get out more, understand how the rightwing pols sound to voters who aren’t staunch conservatives and find some people who don’t sound like college debaters impressed with their own arguments. If they don’t, like the Democrats from 1972 to 1992, they will find themselves out of favor and out of the White House. They might be certain they have “won” the arguments on points, but will have lost power — for a very long time.

 

[cupper]

Marc Thiessen also makes a similar point, although I don't agree with him that the Debt Ceiling would be a better hostage to take, for much the same reasons as made against taking Gov't funding hostage.

Theissen, (I think mistakenly) sees this a a fight over Obamacare, rather than a fight for the soul of the Republican Party

The GOP flunks Hostage Taking 101

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-the-gop-flunks-hostage-taking-101/2013/09/30/43a4ff00-29d2-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html?hpid=z3

Democrats are in such a panic over the prospect of a government shutdown that President Obama spent four hours on the golf course Saturday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told his colleagues to take the weekend off, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi left town to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary.

Why show up for work? The Democrats are following Napoleon’s old adage: Never interfere when your enemy is in the process of destroying himself.

Obama has accused Republicans of hostage taking. Let’s be clear: I’m all for taking hostages. Both sides do it all the time. But one of the first things they teach you in Hostage Taking 101 is that you have to choose a hostagethe other side cares about saving. Obama and the Democrats don’t care about stopping a government shutdown. With a shutdown, Republicans are essentially putting a gun to their own heads and threatening to pull the trigger if the Democrats don’t capitulate. Not surprisingly, it’s not working.

Some congressional Republicans can’t seem to get it though their heads: When it comes to a government shutdown they . . . have . . . no . . . leverage. By contrast, when it comes to the debt-limit showdown, they do have leverage; while Obama can let the government close and blame the GOP, he cannot allow the United States to default.

As former treasury secretary Timothy Geithner explained during the last debt-limit standoff, the effects of default would be “catastrophic,” resulting in the “loss of millions of American jobs,” and would have an economic impact “potentially much more harmful than the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.” Obama will not permit an economic crisis worse than 2008-09 and the “loss of millions of American jobs” on his watch. He has no choice but to negotiate with GOP leaders and cut a deal to avoid a government default.

So what’s the smart move here, Republicans? Simple: Pass a clean, short-term continuing resolution to keep the government operating at current levels and then attach your demands to legislation raising the debt limit. That is what House Speaker John Boehner wanted to do. But House Republicans instead insisted on sending the Senate a bill demanding a one-year delay in Obamacare and repeal of the medical-device tax as a condition of avoiding a government shutdown. The shutdown that Democrats not-so-secretly want to happen so they can blame the GOP.

This is not even smart procedurally. Reid doesn’t need 60 votes to kill the House bill. He can reject it and send it right back to the House with a simple majority vote. Republicans have not so much as spoiled Reid’s lunch plans, much less put him in a political corner.

What House Republicans have done, however, is undermine their chances of at least getting a one-year delay in Obamacare. They might very well have forced Democrats to swallow such a delay if they had waited and attached it to a debt-limit increase. But now, because they attached it to a doomed continuing resolution, Senate Democrats will be on record voting against a one-year delay. They are not likely to reverse themselves in a few weeks’ time and vote for it.

The sad part is, Republicans could have been winning this fight. President Obama’s approval rating is at a two-year low, and polls show that only 39 percent of Americans approve of Obamacare. The law is less popular than ever. But only 27 percent of Americans want Republicans to shut down the government over Obamacare. That’s why Obama and Senate Democrats are champing at the bit to let the government close — so they can divide the Republicans from voters who agree with them on substance and torture the GOP with weeks of bad news coverage.

If Republicans had taken their stand on the debt ceiling instead, there would be no weeks of bad news coverage — because the Democrats would be capitulating instead of celebrating.

Republicans are failing for one simple reason: They took the wrong hostage.

 

[a_majoor]

Remember in the US system of Government, the House holds the power of the purse, not the Senate or the Executive branch.

This is similar to the situation in Westminister democracies, where Parliament holds the power of the purse, rather than the Lords or the Sovereign (as Charles 1 discovered the hard way).

So the Executive does not have unrestrained powers to legislate things into being (or given the disarray of Obamacare, with the exchanges simply not ready to operate and a morass or exceptions and exemptions flowing from the Executive branch to paper over flaws and reward/punish constituent groups, attempt to rule by fiat in order to make things work), and the House can indeed use the power of the purse to stop executive overreach.

Now the authority of the Lower House (in both a Republic and a Westminister Parliament) was originally intended to prevent the Executive/Sovereign from going to war or continuing wars without the consent of the people (shutting off the money supply has a negative effect on military operations, after all), but the ultimate reason is to prevent the Executive/Sovereign from having the ability to impose absolute rule.

 

[cupper]

Happy US Government Shutdown Everyone!

And Happy Affordable Care Act Going Into Effect Day!

Alanis Morrisett would be so proud of the irony.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Neither a shutdown - it's happened before, twice in the mid 1990s, not Obamacare are especially dangerous - silly, but not really problematic.

What matters is 17 Oct 13 when the US Debt Ceiling must be raised or the US must, like e.g. Argentina, become a deadbeat and default on its debt payments to domestic and, eventually, foreign creditors.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Somehow the current occupant of the White House got elected twice to the highest office in the land.He definitely is the most left of center President in our history.After 8 years of Obama,the smart money is on Hillary or Biden.The Republican lineup is equally unappealing.

And, in an outsider's "look in" to America politics, John Ibbitson, writing in the Globe and Mail, suggests that: "The U.S. budget battle will end in Republican defeat."

Ibbitson posits that Speaker John Boehner "must now somehow find a way forward that prevents a default and that gets the government running again while contending with the Tea Party militants. One way would be for the Speaker to expend whatever political capital he still has to round up 20 or so moderate Republican representatives and deliver their votes to the Democrats in the House ... [and while] ... such a move would probably cost Mr. Boehner his speakership, as enraged Tea Partiers sought revenge ... he would at least have prevented the world’s largest economy and the holder of the reserve currency from fatally debasing its credit worthiness."

But that will not, I think, be enough. I suspect that America will find itself, temporarily, with the three party system: HUGELY powerful Democrats, shattered, weak Republicans and an ascendant, but still weak, Tea Party. It probably will not matter, much, who the Democrats select to be their presidential candidate in 2016, (s)he'll win in a walk in a three way race and carry both houses of the Congress on his/her coat-tails.

 

[Journeyman]

... he would at least have prevented the world’s largest economy and the holder of the reserve currency from fatally debasing its credit worthiness."

Yet these are the same elected officials who chortled as Obama/Kerry were hung out to dry on the Syria/chemical ultimatum, merely to claim a Pyrrhic partisan victory.  I can't see them suddenly considering the bigger picture, economically this time, as 17 October looms.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Yet these are the same elected officials who chortled as Obama/Kerry were hung out to dry on the Syria/chemical ultimatum, merely to claim a Pyrrhic partisan victory.  I can't see them suddenly considering the bigger picture, economically this time, as 17 October looms.

I hope you're wrong, even as I fear you're right.

In my mind the "shutdown" is a fairly minor, 100% political glitch that will not, in the greater scheme of things, do much serious harm. Default, on the other hand, is akin to an economic nuclear meltdown. One must hope that even the most committed anti-Obama fanatic must understand that the political, economic and, indeed strategic implications of default are enormous. Defaulting on its debts would do damage to America's reputation that can never, ever be recovered.

But it's all about Obama, isn't it? I think he's a weak, ineffectual president but not as bad as many in the past and unlikely to be worse than many of his successors; but is he really worth debasing America's global credibility? I think not. I wonder if many (a few? any?) Republicans are thinking in Washington today?


Edit to add:

Some further thoughts on the credibility issue in this post from the Council on Foreign Relations blog.

 

[cupper]

Listening to various interviews with "moderate" Republicans today I suspect that they are like the dog that chases the car, and finally catches one.

"Now that I've caught it, what do I do with it?"

The prevalent view is that they need to end the shutdown as soon as possible, and hope that the electorate has a short memory come next November.

One interesting comment I heard last night after the shutdown became reality was that it could be a ploy by the GOP leadership to regain control of it's fractious conservative caucus by giving them what they want, and seeing the reality of what they wanted coming true. The thought was that the majority of reasonable GOP House members would be forced to finally tell the 30 to 40 Tea Party Caucus members to STFU and allow the Party to start governing. Nice theory, but as they say, sometimes the simplest answer is the correct answer.

I agree with ERC that the larger problem is the upcoming debt ceiling debate, but you cannot under estimate the impact to the economy of a shutdown that extends out beyond the end of the week. Government workers that were hit by furlough days under the sequester are being hit again. The loss of revenue to the local service businesses (restaurants, local shops, daycares, even transit systems) will be substantial. Just because the government is shut down and the paycheck stops, the bills are still coming, mortgages still need to be paid, and so on.

 

[a_majoor]

To understand what is really happening outside of the overheated rhetoric of the politicians and media, this provides a fairly straightforward play by play. Most people haven't noticed the symmetry between the two sides (or avoid commenting on that), so blaming one party or the other is missing the point: they are share part of the blame.

http://www.volokh.com/2013/09/30/terrorism-hostage-taking-government-shutdown/

“Terrorism,” “Hostage-Taking,” and the Government Shutdown

by Ilya Somin on September 30, 2013 6:14 pm in Congress, Democracy

Some Obama administration supporters claim that Republicans who refuse to pass a bill funding the federal government are acting like “terrorists” or “hostage takers.” To some extent, this is just your typical exaggerated political rhetoric, similar to that of Republicans who absurdly claim that Obama is a “socialist,” for example. But it also presents a fundamentally misleading understanding of the situation.

Terrorists and hostage-takers are evil because they threaten lives and property that do not belong to them. “Your money or your life” is a terroristic threat, because the person making the threat has no right to dispose of either your money or your life. But there isn’t any terrorism or hostage-taking if you say you won’t give me any of your money unless I do something you want me to do.

In the case of the government shutdown, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has no constitutional or other obligation to pass a funding bill that includes funding for Obamacare or [for] any other particular government program. Part of the reason why the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse is so they can decide which government programs are worthy of funding, and which are not. It is also worth noting that the Republicans are not the only side in this dispute who are willing to shut down the government if they don’t get what they want on health care policy. President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate could just as easily avoid a shutdown by accepting the House bill. In its latest version, it doesn’t even defund Obamacare completely, but merely delays implementation by a year and repeals the medical device tax, which is currently part of the law. This is not to say that Obama and the Senate Democrats are acting as “terrorists” or “hostage-takers” either. The Senate is not obliged to pass the House bill. If they do, Obama has every right to veto that bill if it gets to his desk. But there is considerable symmetry between the two sides’ positions.

Ultimately, how you evaluate the situation largely depends on your view of Obamacare. If you believe, as opponents of the law do, that important parts of Obamacare are unconstitutional, while most of the rest will probably cause more harm than good, then shutting down the government for a few days is a small price to pay for getting rid of this albatross; or even just for a substantially increased likelihood of getting rid of it. Conversely, if you believe – as most liberals and Democrats do – that Obamacare is a great advance in health care policy, a government shutdown is a small price to pay to protect it. Several previous shutdowns have resulted from confrontations over policy issues, and the republic has suffered little if any long-term damage from them.

There is, of course, also the question of whether the GOP’s tactics in the shutdown battle are likely to prove effective. Like many observers – including some prominent conservatives and libertarians – I have serious doubts about that. Of course, I also expected the GOP to be less successful in managing the fight over the sequester than they turned out to be. My political prognostications could misfire this time too. In any event, this is a question of political strategy rather than fundamental principle. The GOP’s approach to this fight could turn out to be foolish or self-defeating. But that doesn’t mean it amounts to “terrorism” or “hostage-taking.”

UPDATE: I should note that, in referring to the “latest version” of the GOP House bill, I meant the latest one that has actually passed the House. There have been other versions since that bill passed on Sunday, though none that has actually passed the House. By the time you read this post, it is possible that the version referred to above will have been superseded by a new one. But I doubt it will affect the main point I am making.

 

[tomahawk6]

I think the House is being reasonable in trying to push ACA back a year.The President probably overstepped his authority in postponing the employer mandate a year.Might as well be fair and do the same for the individual mandate.The computer network isn't ready yet.The government had enough time to set it up,but its still not fully ready.The Administration wouldnt budge on implementing ACA and knew there would be a shutdown.Their calculation is that a shutdown is bad for the GOP.We shall see how it pans out. The public expects a compromise but a large segment of the public is against the ACA.The ACA is supposed to deliver affordable insurance,but the premiums I have seen even with a subsidy don't look affordable.If you get a subsidy will you lose your tax return ? Below is a link to a calculator. It will give you a ball park idea of the cost.Every state is different and so are the premiums.

http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator./#state=&zip=&income-type=dollars&income=40000&employer-coverage=0&people=1&adult-count=1&adults%5B0%5D%5Bage%5D=21&adults%5B0%5D%5Btobacco%5D=0&child-count=0&child-tobacco=0

 

[Edward Campbell]

In the National Post, Conrad Black revisits the same ground we have walked many times: America is not really in decline, it is just the fault of the current generation of the political class. One sentence stood out for me:

    "Such a fundamentally strong country does not go to pieces as quickly as the antics of the Bush-Obama era would indicate is now happening."

I'm not so sure. Consider Britain. We can argue about when Britain reached its zenith - I say around 1835 - but we cannot doubt that by, say, 1935 Britain was no longer the world's greatest power, it was not even one of the top two or three. Now, it's fair, also, to say that Britain was never a great military power, although it was the supreme naval power, because it didn't need to be ~ it's economy gave it all the power in really needed. But: Britain was THE global superpower between, say, 1825 and 1875, the decline into second rate status took, at most 100 years, maybe no more than about 50.

One could argue that America reached the zenith of its power in the 1950s, maybe 50 years later we ought not to be surprised that decline is in the air.

 

[tomahawk6]

In the National Post, Conrad Black revisits the same ground we have walked many times: America is not really in decline, it is just the fault of the current generation of the political class. One sentence stood out for me:

    "Such a fundamentally strong country does not go to pieces as quickly as the antics of the Bush-Obama era would indicate is now happening."

I'm not so sure. Consider Britain. We can argue about when Britain reached its zenith - I say around 1835 - but we cannot doubt that by, say, 1935 Britain was no longer the world's greatest power, it was not even one of the top two or three. Now, it's fair, also, to say that Britain was never a great military power, although it was the supreme naval power, because it didn't need to be ~ it's economy gave it all the power in really needed. But: Britain was THE global superpower between, say, 1825 and 1875, the decline into second rate status took, at most 100 years, maybe no more than about 50.

One could argue that America reached the zenith of its power in the 1950s, maybe 50 years later we ought not to be surprised that decline is in the air.

I respect your opinion Edward,but the US is far from finished as a world power.What did Britain in were its socialist policies.In fact its what ails Europe as a whole.They cannot afford the military power to do much more than protect their own borders.They would fold in days of a Russian invasion.Fortunately Russia cannot afford a modern military.If their economy became like China's watch out !!