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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.
The entire political world right now is holding its collective breath over whether a deal will be struck between President Obama and the leadership of Congress to raise America's debt ceiling. The more honest observers of this process have noted the "Kabuki theater" nature of the proceedings, as they wisely discount the possibility that the deadline will be reached with no agreement in place. "This is all for show," the jaded pundits assure us, "there will be a deal." But this reasoning can be taken one step further: not only will there be a last-minute deal, but the deal will not happen until that last minute -- and this is by design. While duelling press conferences amuse the public, behind the scenes the name of the game Obama and the Republicans are playing could rightly be called "The Big Stall."
The silly season has come early to Washington, it seems. The root cause is a simple fact of American politics these days -- sometimes, there just can't be transparency. That's a fairly provocative statement, so allow me to explain my reasoning in detail. Then, later on (in the talking points section of our program), we'll get into the option of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and how Obama should be using it right about now. But for now, it's time for a sober assessment of where Washington currently stands.
The mainstream media love to use opinion poll numbers to highlight the American public's disapproval of certain persons and institutions. But there's one poll number they never seem to get around to adequately reporting: their own. There's a reason for this, and it is a simple one. The media doesn't report their own poll numbers because their poll numbers stink, and it's less embarrassing to just ignore this fact rather than to report it.
Since the year is now exactly half over, I took the opportunity yesterday to tally up how much vacation time Congress has taken this year, so far. The answer is pretty shocking -- the House has taken 46 out of a possible 125 non-holiday weekdays off, and the Senate (not to be outdone) has gone on vacation for 49 days out of those 125. To put this another way, out of 26 weeks Congress could have worked, the House took over nine weeks off on vacation, and the Senate took almost ten weeks to play rather than work. Something for everyone to ponder as we all enjoy our measly three-day vacation this weekend!
President Obama, in his press conference yesterday, took Congress to task over the fact that it doesn't work. In fact, he did so in both senses of the phrase "doesn't work." Obama lit into Congress for not doing much in the best of times, and also pointed out the glaring fact that Congress sure does take a lot of vacation time, don't they?
Michele Bachmann's political fortunes are visibly on the rise. Mostly due to a well-received debate performance and a single good poll in Iowa, Bachmann is now the newest shining star to emerge on the stage of the Republican presidential nomination contest. Whether she later proves to be a flavor-of-the-week or whether she actually has staying power is still an open question, at this point. But what appears increasingly obvious is that Bachmann's rise is coming at the expense of another Republican woman's draw on the Republican primary electorate: Sarah Palin.
Well, it's certainly been an eventful couple of weeks, hasn't it?
We're back on our regular weekly schedule here after returning home from our second trip this month (this one to Netroots Nation), after which I can firmly conclude that flying, these days, sucks. Big time. Sigh.
Later today, President Obama is going to address the nation on the subject of the Afghanistan war. Specifically, he's going to make good on a promise made a year-and-a-half ago: to begin the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan next month. The big question everyone's been speculating about in the run-up to this announcement has been how big a reduction the president will announce.
[Program Note: OK, since I've been away, and since June has been a (shall we say) "sub-par" month for us here in terms of posting things in a timely manner, I'm going to run a rare late-Sunday column for your edification. This is, in some ways, a mea culpa for the break in service last week. Also, it seemed appropriate, since I've been away so much this month that I pretty much completely missed commenting on the continuing saga of Anthony Weiner. So, while Weiner's case was a bit more unique (no hookers were even involved), I thought it time to dig this column out from three years ago, which I wrote in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. You may also wish to check out a follow-up column I wrote entitled "On Whores" in November of 2009. In any case, this column somehow seemed appropriate, given the mainstream media frenzy in the past few weeks....]