GOP Gunning for Pyrrhic Victory?
At any time, coming out of anyone’s mouth, it’d be outrageous, even unthinkable. Why, then, has the GOP’s desire for Barack Obama to fail–not at the ballot box, mind you, but as President and Commander in Chief–become not just more hot air from commentator Rush Limbaugh, but a talking point and Conservative shibboleth?
Politics, especially in its many American guises, has never been a particularly polite business. Political discourse isn’t generally something reserved for genteel gatherings over cucumber sandwiches; it’s rough-and-tumble stuff, as anyone who’s turned on a television on pretty much any day in the last seventeen years or longer will tell you. But with this particular meme, the chattering class in the GOP has hit a strident new low. While many commentators on the left–those at The Nation, Daily Kos, and pretty much anyone on MSNBC besides Joe Scarborough, for instance–were absolutely merciless toward George W. Bush for the last eight years, none suggested that it’d be in their best interests, much less the country’s, should he fail.
The Presidency is a hard enough job as it is, even for the best-intentioned. Whatever else might be, or might have been, said of George W. Bush, it’s not as though he intended to run the country into the ground, however close his actions may have come to accomplishing that end. Other presidents have seen their best intentions, and indeed their best actions, come to nothing (Wilson’s plans for the post-World War I peace, the myriad failures of Reconstruction under a string of presidents post-Lincoln), or come to far more destructive ends (Hoover’s terrible mismanagement of the Great Depression, Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis or of Afghanistan, the Reagan-Bush misadventures in Central America and vis-a-vis Iraq, Kennedy’s Viet Nam debacle). So where, exactly, does this come from, and by what measure is this sound politics, much less sound governance?
Exhibit A would be Rush Limbaugh, who has repeatedly called for a failed Obama presidency. Disgracefuled former Congressman Tom DeLay chimed his agreement with Limbaugh, while Michelle Malkin and others soon jumped on the bandwagon. And the few who’ve called Limbaugh on his words and actions–at least in this case, if in precious few others–have scrambled to take back even those mild rebukes. RNC chair Michael Steele, Mark Sanford and Phil Gingrey have all recently called Limbaugh a pompous windbag (in so many words), Steele himself having the gall, the unmitigated audacity, of calling Limbaugh’s actions “ugly.” And then, hey presto, taking it back quicker than you can say “24-hour news cycle,” proceeding to grovel at the feet (seldom seen past the belly) of the Commentator.
There’s a problem here, not least of all for the GOP. The “Base” of either party doesn’t win elections, as the Republicans found out to their dismay in 2006 and again, when they failed to learn from 2006, in 2008. Sure, they can pick candidates, and do; the American people, however, aren’t necessarily–or even usually–best served by the fringes of the party. Of, let me emphasize, either party. To pretend that a broadcaster should shape the policy of the nation is the height of ignorance. I wouldn’t want Limbaugh for President, wouldn’t want Bill O’Reilly at VP, nor would I even want Keith Olbermann, much as I like the guy, for Secretary of State.
But there’s another problem here that transcends parties, and ultimately transcends politics. Let me be clear: we don’t need blind agreement among all parties, be they individual or political. We don’t need thrown, or sham, elections like those that take place even now in Iran and Russia. I expect neither the Democrats nor the Republicans to congratulate each other on a game well played, or to pretend that who’s in power doesn’t matter, as though government is nothing more than a game of tee ball among six-year-olds. However, what should be borne in mind, especially by these sunshine patriots–wherever we may find them–is that, often as not, when the President fails, so fails the nation. If the person at the helm becomes disoriented, or is somehow led off course, the nation itself generally isn’t too far behind.
We can take heart in the fact that we’re a resilient lot. As a nation, we’ve survived the worst actions of our best-intentioned politicians, and the best that our worst-intentioned could throw at us. It would be wrong, however, to think or act as though the success of the man at the top–present or future–has no relation to our fortunes, present or future. To advocate for his failure is, in a very real sense, to agitate for the failure of the rest of us as well.
I’m not saying that Limbaugh ought to be censored; it’s great theater, after all, and the remedy for ideas with which we disagree is more, and better, ideas. But therein lies the problem; at the moment, the GOP is running a bit short of ideas, and this… bitterness seems for now the best they can manage. There’s a need for a healthy, intelligent, and vital opposition, no matter who’s in power. If the Republican party can get past the bitterness to matters of substance, they can fill that position with honor and no small utility to the people and the country they claim so loudly to love. If they fail, their position and its results will be akin to something we last saw during the Viet Nam war; they will, at some point, claim–perhaps with straight faces, perhaps not–that they had to destroy the country in order to save it.
Tags: Politics, Rush Limbaugh, Tom DeLay