By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Standing back from our political situation, I think of the Laurel and Hardy schtick where Ollie turns to Stan and says, “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” Blubbering, Stanley wheezes out little peeps of distress, squinches up his face and scratches his head.
We’re Ollie. We’re Stan. And this fine mess is the result of decades of policies and decisions by Reagan, Bush the Elder, Clinton and Bush the Younger. Obama is the newest engineer on our runaway train, but he doesn’t seem to have any magic tricks to offer us. Most presidents don’t have to deal with both domestic and foreign firestorms at the same time, and you can tell that Obama would rather be flying at jet speed, not careening along on rickety, old paradigm tracks toward the cliff looming ahead. Doubtless there are some mornings when Obama peeps, squinches and scratches, too; perhaps most mornings.
In order to free Congress for big legislation like health care and energy reform, Obama chose to ‘move on’ from Bushy criminal investigations, thus taking on ownership of the fine mess we’re in. The obvious result of GW’s hubristic tenure — hyperextending militarism and the free market right to the edge on warring, spending, borrowing and deregulating — is that we’re now over the edge on every front. Government has always kept the worst projections and assessments from the public in order to keep the economy calm and the people compliant. The good news is that, coming off several decades of denial-binge, the public now recognizes that facts trump political rhetoric. The bad news is that the political system is so hamstrung by partisanship that it can’t move more than baby steps at a time, impeded by those who think “the good old days” of American dominance and expansion are still an option.
In this country, “where seldom is heard a discouraging word,” we lie to each other and to ourselves to preserve that sunny Reaganesque illusion. Believing lies is our national version of Prozac. Not wanting to know is a sedation overdose that has now landed us all in the emergency room. Because we still don’t want to face the truth, we continue to slap band-aids on national wounds to our treasury, liberties and ethics that gush like BP’s failed pipes. Each day that passes makes a dire situation more critical.