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If I were a Hobbit, right about now I would be wondering just how the heck I wound up at the center of this Washington intraparty political fight, personally. What (I would ponder in my metaphorical Hobbit hole) had I done to any of these folks to deserve being dragged into this fracas?
As I write this, the House of Representatives has still not voted on Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the debt ceiling. But no matter how the vote goes, the real question behind this week's action in the Republican caucus in the House may be whether Boehner will still be Speaker when the shouting's over and done. The simmering Tea Party factionalism may be about to explode into public view, in other words.
There are now only a handful of possible outcomes of the debt ceiling standoff in Washington. We'll get to them all in a minute in more detail. One way or another, it's a pretty safe bet that the issue will (at least temporarily) be resolved by the fifth of August, at the absolute latest. Bank on it. The reason for such certainty is a simple one: if the debate goes on in any way past that date, then it will start to cut into Congress' month-long summer vacation. Which is (as any observer of American politics should know full well) the one unthinkable bridge-too-far in Washington. Because Congress' vacations are sacred... at least, to them.
There is a grand tradition in Washington -- which is followed by both parties, at various times -- of avoiding big and politically-delicate problems. This tradition used to be called the "blue-ribbon commission," although for some reason the "blue-ribbon" part isn't used much anymore. But whatever you call it, this political dodge is created for one purpose and one purpose alone: to waste time. To the best of my knowledge, no commission (blue-ribbon or otherwise bedecked) has ever come up with a solution to anything which has been thus implemented by the politicians (again, of either party) to solve a big problem (although you could make an argument for the base-closing commission, I guess). But virtually all of these commissions have succeeded wildly on their main objective of wasting as much time as possible.
The bigger space news this week, sadly, was not that exciting. The final space shuttle mission just ended. Although I didn't see it specifically, a newspaper headline-writer with a sense of irony would have set the story under: "The Shuttle Has Landed." Because this week also saw an anniversary of import to the discussion -- 42 years ago this Wednesday, Neil Armstrong radioed back to Houston the immortal phrase: "The Eagle has landed," marking the first safe landing on Earth's natural satellite by the human species.
This is but one poll, to be sure. But most of the other polls I've seen this week back up the data presented here. Americans are turned off by Republican extremism, and open to Democrats' willingness to compromise. They are disgusted with the way the lawmakers in Washington are operating, and they may just take out this anger next year at the polls.
In the past few weeks, one rising star has appeared in the Republican firmament (or two, depending on how you count them), and more than a few have begun fading -- perhaps permanently -- from center stage. But the field itself is not yet set (in terms of who is actually running and who will sit this one out), as the Republican Party continues to search for the perfect candidate to defeat President Obama. In fact, two of our four frontrunners this time around have not even announced their candidacy yet -- showing how volatile the entire race still remains.
Are we seeing the new model of Barack Obama's presidency? Is this (in the parlance of Silicon Valley) "Obama 2.0"?
Today, I'd like to excerpt some of those articles, as "footnotes" to yesterday's column. While copyright laws prevent me from just pasting whole articles in here, I am allowed fair usage excerpts, which is what you'll find below. The promise of the internet was supposed to be easy access to this sort of thing, but in recent years many media sites have locked off their archives behind paywalls, making it impossible to freely access this historical material.
I've always been astounded at the near-complete lack of historical memory regularly exhibited by both Washington politicians and the "journalists" who purport to cover them. Nothing I've seen in the past few weeks has caused me to change this opinion, either, as the fight over raising the federal debt ceiling has played itself out.