The political retirement of Evan Bayh, at age 54, is being portrayed by various sages as a result of too much partisanship, or the Senate's dysfunction, or even the systemic breakdown of American governance. Most of this is rationalization. The real story, of which Mr. Bayh's frustration is merely the latest sign, is the failure once again of liberal governance.RTWT at the link.
For the fourth time since the 1960s, American voters in 2008 gave Democrats overwhelming control of both Congress and the White House. Republicans haven't had such large majorities since the 1920s. Yet once again, Democratic leaders have tried to govern the country from the left, only to find that their policies have hit a wall of practical and popular resistance.
Democrats failed in the latter half of the 1960s, as the twin burdens of the Great Society and Vietnam ended the Kennedy boom and split their party. They failed again after Watergate, as Congress dragged Jimmy Carter to the left and liberals had no answer for stagflation. They failed a third time in the first two Bill Clinton years, as tax increases and HillaryCare led to the Gingrich Congress before Mr. Clinton salvaged his Presidency by tacking to the center.
A fourth crackup is already well underway and is even more remarkable considering how Democrats were set up for success. Inheriting a recession amid GOP failures, Democrats had the chance to restore economic confidence and fix the financial system with modest reforms that would let them take credit for the inevitable recovery. Yet only 13 months later, Democrats are down in the polls, their agenda is stymied by Democratic opposition, and their House and Senate majorities are in peril as moderates like Mr. Bayh flee the scene of this political accident.
RELATED: Doug Ross, "Top Democrat Strategists Formulate Awesomely Cool Plan to Recover From Bayh Defection: Obama Should Use Bully Pulpit More Often."
Plus, Chris Cillizza, "Winners and Losers From Evan Bayh's Retirement" (via Memeorandum).
Reminds me of the saying about repeating history because you didn't study it...
ReplyDeleteThe Dems are pushing the same tired watered-down Marxism that prevailed when I worked for Gene McCarthy in '68 on his National Staff [John Podesta worked for me in a two-man storefront in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn!]. Back then the buzz was about "The Movement," a sort of inevitable progression toward a socialist state mirroring the Social Democrats in Europe with a foreign policy rather benign toward the USSR's imperialism. Indeed, I can remember Gene McCarthy commenting at the Chicago Convention that the crushing of the Velvet Revolution in Prague was "of no importance."
ReplyDeleteThe Wall Street Journal does have the Dems' history rhyming whenever they get their hands on the WH. Always the tendency to tax and spend from a statist "commanding heights" which tries to monopolize the levers of power. Sadly, after Carter and Clinton, GWB repeated some of their mistakes almost by inference and unlike Carter and especially Clinton, GWB didn't want to get his hands dirty pushing unpopular legislation such as Social Security reform when it ran into absurd hysterics by Nancy Botox in '05, as she raved about Katrina & blew him off his game.
Obama appears to be more leftist than Carter or Clinton, coming from a Chicago Machine which is a version of an urban mixed economy. To try to nationalize Chicago's crooked unions and gigantic public sector corruption made us all want to gag and puke---especially independents who thought he might be sincere about transparency. No C-Span for this little o.
To compound the error of not learning from his predecessors' mistakes, Obama appears to have convinced himself that Clinton's Morris-engineered triangulation was a mistake somehow... regardless of the fact that most Americans supported such moderation and it saved Bubba's presidency.
ReplyDeleteWith such delusional obstinance, how sweet it is to contemplate Barack Obama's coming demise...
Your post linked at Reaganite Republican:
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2010/02/bayh-warns-liberals-political.html
"Inheriting a recession"
ReplyDeletethe Democrats did not inherit a recession they were part of it, Obama and Biden both served in the Senate one for about 3 years the other for about 34 years, they had a hand in crafting the recession as much as the Republicans, one more thing the Republicans never had a bullet proof majority in either the house or the senate, the senate they barely held on to a majority, then again the Democrats help the Republican craft the recession.