From the ArcaMax Publishing, Arianna Huffington Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/ariannahuffington/s-348031-817277
I recently wrote about how, despite a seismic shift that has brought
about the mainstreaming of positions and policies formerly considered
"left wing," the traditional media continue to insist on promoting the
idea that on almost every issue the truth is to be found smack dab in
the bipartisan middle.
This weekend, the Wall Street Journal served up a classic example of
this wrongheaded conventional wisdom, a lengthy piece entitled
"America's Race to the Middle," by John Harwood and Gerald Seib.
I was handed the Journal on my Saturday flight from New York to San
Francisco on
The piece starts off by rightly noting the public's "hunger for
change" and "major reforms." But the authors then argue that the cause
of this hunger is the fact that "the two parties have moved further
apart on the ideological spectrum," resulting in "party fatigue."
Excuse me? The reason 82 percent of the public thinks the country is
on the wrong track is because of "party fatigue"? This is beyond
parody. Might it not have something to do with the Iraq war, the
sputtering economy, the price of gas, skyrocketing foreclosures, and
the way the Bush administration has systematically shredded the
Constitution and abandoned the moral high ground?
Wasn't the Iraq war the crowning example of bipartisanship during the
Bush era? And we know how well that bipartisanship worked out.
Actually, what is tragic is that, in the run-up to the war, we didn't
have more of the "gridlock" Harwood and Seib decry. A lot of people
are dead because of the bipartisanship that Harwood and Seib venerate.
And it's not just Harwood and Seib, but two of the people they turn to
in order to buttress their case -- Karl Rove and former RNC chair Ken
Mehlman. "Both parties," Mehlman says, "having accomplished the big
things that they set out to do, fight over the small things." Yeah,
small things like that little fracas going on over in Iraq. Or the
collapsing housing market. Or 45 million people without health
insurance.
The solution? According to Harwood and Seib, the answer is quite
simple: Politicians from different parties need to hang out more. I'm
not kidding. The problem is that "fewer lawmakers from opposing sides
actually live in Washington, where they and their families might get
better acquainted and engage in the natural human inclination to
compromise with a friend."
The article quotes GOP Rep. Jim McCrery, who says, "When you get to
know somebody as a neighbor, or your kids play together on the soccer
team, it's harder for you to go on the floor and call them names."
Sure, if only Denny Hastert and Nancy Pelosi had had a few dinners
together, we might not be in a disastrous war, or we wouldn't have had
No Child Left Behind, or a prescription drug program that doesn't
allow the government to negotiate with drug companies to reduce
prices. Oh wait, those were all bipartisan bills.
Pie-in-the-sky,
everybody-has-to-be-in-the-center-as-the-right-defines-it articles get
written all the time. But seldom are they as out of touch with what's
really going on as "America's Race to the Middle."
Another article I read on the plane, by Carl Hulse in the
The Times piece was about how Bush and House Republicans are banding
together to go out with what appears to be a giant
to-hell-with-America bang. In short, House Democrats are about to send
Bush several bills. Bush is planning to veto them and the lunatic
fringe of the House (a.k.a. the GOP leadership) is going to back him.
One of those bills is a war and international aid appropriations bill
that comes with a $195 billion price tag instead of the $178 billion
Bush requested. The extra money? It's for college benefits for
veterans and extra unemployment benefits for those suffering because
of the recession.
Another bill getting the veto threat would aid those facing
foreclosure. Bush has also promised to veto legislation that would
take away tax breaks for oil companies. And something tells me that no
amount of bipartisan dining or across-the-aisle soccer match cheering
would change that.
Thankfully, Democrats seem to be coming to their senses -- finally --
and rejecting the notion that joining hands with Republicans and
racing to what the right wants us all to believe is the middle is
sound political strategy. The problem with Washington hasn't been
gridlock, it's been Democrats' willingness to buy into the
conventional wisdom and cave in on issue after issue in the name of
bipartisan comity.
The road to victory in 2008 doesn't run through a mythical middle that
has been dragged far to the right over the past seven-plus years; it
runs through the actual mainstream -- the place the majority of
Americans inhabit. The center that opposes the war, favors economic
fairness, knows that climate change is real and a crisis, wants to
take care of our veterans, and believes in the right to universal
health care.
As for the media, perhaps someone can send those intoxicated with the
misguided conventional wisdom on bipartisanship to reporter rehab.
========
Arianna Huffington's e-mail address is arianna@huffingtonpost.com.