Political Developments

One of the biggest problems that anyone claiming to be a leader faces is the possibility of losing the support of those the leader purports to lead. Talk about an embarrassing development, where a leader is trying to lead and the tacit led just roll their eyes. Nobody wants to be in that position, especially people with the kinds of egos that compels them to, for example, run for public office. The reason that most governments throughout history have tended towards caution and conservativism is that a certain amount of caution serves leaders well. Any fool knows that decisions made quickly are MUCH more likely to result in the decider having to explain later what the hell he was thinking. Add in the fact that, these days, any sort of political decisions can have vast repercussions that must be considered. The end result is that any call for hasty action is likely to draw - at the very least - suspicion from the leader's constituiency, and the leader who makes such calls is sooner or later going to have to explain himself. Generally, people are smart enough to know that things done quickly get done poorly.

People tend to complain that the legal system - including both the Courts and the legislative process - takes a whole lot of time to do a whole lot of nothing. Well. Here's a newsflash: THAT'S THE WAY IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE. When things go quickly, that is when mistakes get made. That is when unintended consequences arise. That is when heads roll after the fact. It is not supposed to be easy or convenient to enact new policy or to make new law. When a system of government reaches the level were setting policy is as casual as, for example, lords telling the people to eat cake, revolutions quickly - and rightly - follow.

The process is supposed to be slow. It's supposed to be time consuming. Because that is the best way - and really the only way - to get it RIGHT. When things happen quickly, they happen badly. Take for example Obama's recent victory in the house over green energy (the cap-and-trade legislation). As Americans, we should be embarassed about the way that went through the House of Representatives. Setting aside the extremely poor economic reasoning behind the legislation, just consider the process of its passage: The final draft of that bill, which was over a thousand pages long, was completed and circulated among the House THE MORNING OF THE VOTE. That means that when the vote came, NOBODY WHO VOTED FOR IT HAD EVEN READ THE FINAL VERSION OF THE LAW. The bill was pushed through the Democratic House by a Democratic President so fast that nobody could even read it, based on little more than the force of his personality, and with those supporting the bill not actually knowing the terms they were approving.

Kids, this is exactly why there is a separation of power between the White House and the Capitol. Congress is supposed to do their own jobs, not just toe the line set by a President who happens to claim the same party affiliation. If your congressman voted in favor of that bill (here's a list) they sold out this country's energy industry on nothing more than the word of a President with questionable political agenda, even more questionable social connections, and no track record of successful leadership. They rushed it through. They treated sweeping legislation like a vote for high school class president, and checked the box that the popular kids told them to.

Now, Barack is trying to take the same measures in forcing through his healthcare agenda, by doing things like placing short deadlines (August) on Congress' reaching a vote on restructuring healthcare FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. Healthcare is an issue that Congress has been trying to work out for years, but Barack was demanding results within 8 months of his taking the throne. He Ordered it to be so. Clearly, national socialized healthcare is Obama's sine qua non, and is probably what he intends to be his legacy as president. He wants history to say that he got healthcare for everyone, which is a project - he says - tantamount to putting a man on the moon. He could be right. But he doesn't seem to realize that the Apollo program took 9 years to make the dream a practical reality. Can you imagine what a disaster it would have been if, eight months after announcing the Apollo program, Kennedy expected there to be a rocket ready to be launched? Almost inevitable result of that timetable is a KA-BOOM on the launch pad. Do we want to risk that sort of explosion where the rocket in question is our healthcare system?

Fortunately, our Founding Fathers set things up pretty well, and there's still hope. We have a two-house legislative system, and the Senate will, for example have time to actually read the cap-and-trade bill before voting on it. As I'll get to, lawmakers - even democrats - are steadily realizing that Barack Obama has no idea how to run a country, and are no longer being coerced into idiotic action by nothing more than his charisma. Hopefully the bill will never make it out of the Senate committee process.

There are other good signs as well, which indicate the process is continuing to work, notwithstanding the Administration. The House has just passed a "pay-as-you-go" (PAYGO) measure, which if endorsed by the Senate, will require the Federal Government to come up with a dollar of savings for every dollar spent in new legislation. When then send more money somewhere, they have to take that same amount of money from somewhere else, rather than just printing more money or assuming more debt. Essentially, it's a bar on deficit-spending. Unlike pretty much everything the White House has sent to congress, this type of law has a solid track record. A similar measure was enacted in the early 90s to reign in deficit problems back then, and actually resulted in a $5.6 trillion budget surplus. Which was wasted, of course, but it was there.

The passage of this bill is political wrangling in action, and frankly bodes poorly for the President. As charming and dynamic as he is, he doesn't have the experience, support, or slipperiness to take on congress in a straight-up political fight. While there is no single politician in America that can out-charisma Obama, that charisma really gets mileage only in campaign years. The rest of the time, being an American politician means practicing politics against opponents of the highest level. Obama's short history in the game means that, when it comes to political maneuvering, Congress is going to take him out behind the woodshed for an asswuppin.

So make no mistake, PAYGO is a political attack on the President by Congress. If the PAYGO measure gets through the senate, Barack's political ass will be on the line when the bill comes to him to be signed into law. Here is the dilemma he will face: If he vetos the PAYGO bill, he will be vetoing cost controls, and essentially telling the world that his Administration cannot operate without deficit spending. He will have to admit that his programs rely on the ability to pass off their bills onto whatever Administration (or generation) comes next. Not a good message to send, as even left-leaning polls indicate that many Americans fear overwhelming deficit more than they fear a slow economy.

However, if Obama signs PAYGO into law, it will effectively kill his healthcare plan, and throw high hurdles in the way of most of the other far-left social reforms that he champions. There is no way that the Federal government is going to be able to balance several trillion dollars of healthcare and social welfare spending into an already exceeded budget, if they are unable to simply assume the cost as debt. PAYGO is actually a brilliant move by Congress, which has all the experience and political savvy that Obama lacks: Passage of PAYGO will kill nationalized healthcare, without even requiring congressional democrats to openly vote against nationalized healthcare.

Strangely enough, this crunch between congress and the President is actually the system working the way it is supposed to. Clearly - and notwithstanding one-liners from Administration mouthpieces (read: Harry Reid, Nancy Pulosi) - congress as a body opposes Obama's plan. America cannot afford and will not support his sweeping reform agenda. Google "blue dogs" for an account of how even Democrats are publicly refusing to toe the line. Those rumblings of non-support have been going on for weeks.

A politically savvy president would have and should have responded to those rumblings accordingly: backing off the push, or redirecting efforts into something that would get widespread support, at least from his own political party. But Obama is not politically savvy. He ignored those polite indicators of dissent from congress. So, polite messages having failed, congress has thrown down the gauntlet. You think it's coincidence that PAYGO comes through concurrently with congressmen asserting worries about cost controls on healthcare reform? If he continues his frantic, fanatical crusade on healthcare reform, congress is going to put Obama in a politically untenable spot, the softest results of which would be forcing him to back down on healthcare. In the face of PAYGO, he will need to come up with some economically viable middle ground for healthcare, abandon his healthcare quest, or else concede (through a veto of PAYGO) that America cannot afford his programs without mortgaging the future.

Nobody who knows politics should be surprised by any of this. Barack, I guarantee you, is surprised by this, and probably outraged that people are not simply rallying behind him the way they did last November. I'm actually kinda eager to see how he responds to this, including wondering if he's going to take note of the PAYGO thing and its implications before law reaches his desk for signature. But regardless, for all his personal charisma, he has not been politician enough to avoid this ultimatum from congress, and I cannot imagine that he is politician enough to manage the ultimatum well. We'll just hear more dazzling rhetoric, which will have less and less attention paid to it. For all his personal charm and charisma, I expect Barack to be outed as what he is: a charming, intelligent egomaniac who is way over his head in politics he has not the experience or support to deal with.

With the recent admission by Congressional principals that there will not be a healthcare bill going to vote before the August recess, momentum for that bill is fading. The passage of PAYGO is clear rumblings from congress that wild spending is not going to be signed off on by the House. If the senate approves the PAYGO measure before any sort of viable healthcare bill is passed in law, there will be no healthcare bill passed. I expect the end result will be PAYGO reaching the President's desk, followed shortly by the demise of nationalized healthcare, without Democrats even being forced to publicly vote contrary to party Presidential leadership. Which will work, and allow everyone to save face.

Except for the President.

Obama is already looking like a jackass. No clearly beneficial steps have been undertaken under his leadership. The economy now is worse than it was before, and people can only blame prior administrations for so long. Eventually, people are going to realize that we've gone from the Bush Recession into the Obama Depression, based largely on Obama trying (and sometimes succeeding) in jamming through legislation the kills business to provide welfare and healthcare to people who don't earn it.

Further, the crown jewel of Obama's first months in office, national healthcare reform, is on the verge of being rejected by a congress controlled BY THE PRESIDENT'S OWN PARTY. While this is good for America, it's also bad for America, as it shows that world that the American President is really not even in control of his own nation. Obama's conduct and comments fully dictate that he needs to have his political dick cut off and shoved up his ass. However, if that happens, the end result will be at least three years under the rule of a crusading president who has lost the support of the army he tacitly leads. While that situation is infinitely preferable to one where he leads us all to our deaths in pursuit of his glorious ideals, it doesn't bode well for the country either.