Underworld: Rise of the Weasels

Now here's a depressing thought:

"When I've asked Hill staff and elected officials about this, I've gotten an interesting answer: Think about what you need to do to become a politician, they say. Rise up in your local party leadership. Raise a lot of money. Get yourself quoted in the media. Campaign effectively. You don't really need to know that much about policy. And so a lot of elected officials simply don't know much about policy. Even if they wanted to become known as problem solvers and thinkers, they don't have the chops for it, and the pace of modern campaigning means they never have time to develop those chops, either. It's a depressing thought."

Yes, it is, Ezra.

We're seeing it here in Oregon, where our governor's race, among others, couldn't be more depressing. A retreaded former Democratic governor who proved only marginally effective when previously in office against the usual GOP gormless bumper-sticker who represents the triumph of belief in magic over actual thinking. Neither one can be forced to make any sort of statement that strays close to fiscal or political reality.

Both pronounce the usual crap about "prosperity", "freedom", "responsibility", and "integrity" without ever having to explain how they'll restore First World public services to the state without reworking the Skinnerbox that is the Oregon tax code or unravel the mystery that is the state government.

Hmmm. I wonder...how could it be that our "leaders" have evolved into this sort of moronic, testicle-less, money-grubbing, mealy-mouthed rodent?Could it be that we prefer to be told these glittering lies than face the hard, ugly truths?

Gee. That's a depressing thought, too.

Update 7/24: Look, let's try and clarify some things here, OK?

1. I have no brief with Ezra Klein or his technocratic bias other than sharng a liberal political outlook. I don't think that making every elected official in the U.S. a "policy wonk" is practical or would sgnificantly improve the lot of the average schmoes like me and thee.

2. But the point of posting this link was not to argue for making every elected official a wonk. It was to point out that, on the contrary, the current U.S. electoral system encourages the average politician to be ignorant of almost everything they vote on and, consequently, base their votes on lobbyist pressure, bumper-sticker politics, sound bites, and the massive influence of the affluent and well-connected.

3. The notion that "changing the primary system" or depending on wealthy "outsiders" (as if someone entering the political lists in this country as a millionaire or a celebrity could and would be fiercely determined to change the very system that produced that wealth and celebrity) will somehow change this balance away from comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted seems unduly naive.

4. And I really don't see any other "white knights" here. The combination of "good-government" socialists, liberals and conservatives, Reds, union organizers, antitrust crusaders - and a Depression - are not in view. The Democrats, what portion of them are not bought and sold, are a political mess. The GOP is, frankly, a moral and political sewer that has failed to repudiate the crony capitalist, oligarchic, and foreign-adventuring slime of the Bush/Cheney cabal. Everything else seems to fall into Naderite vanity projects and Rand Paul libertarian nutballism.

5. So what I'm saying is that this looks to me very like 1890 only without the probable chance of a TR & Co. to pull us back from corporatist oligarchy. I think the next 100 years stands a very good chance of seeing us slide slowly into political senility and social and economic desuetude.

6. Please give me some hope to believe otherwise. Without magical ponies, if you will.

Despicable Me

Jay Bybee on why torture - or on why giving legal opinions that say, in effect, "torture is OK by me" - is bad and to be regretted:

"I have regrets because of the notoriety that this has brought me," he said. "It has imposed enormous pressures on me both professionally and personally. It has had an impact on my family. And I regret that, as a result of my government service, that that kind of attention has been visited on me and on my family."

Greenwald's conclusion:

"That's what happens when you create a society where elites can engage in the most wretched and destructive acts with total impunity: it engenders a blinding, empathy-free, effete sense of entitlement whereby they see themselves as the only ones who matter and their own plight as the only one worthy of consideration. If you build a political system grounded in the premise that there's an elite caste so special and elevated that they are entitled even to hover above the laws and rules to which everyone else is subjected, the beneficiaries of that caste system are always the first to believe in its virtue."

Worth reading the whole thing.

My question would be: at this point, is the disconnection between the welfare of the People and the welfare of those who have the wealth and political connections to be elected to "lead" the People so great that it has made systematic reform all but impossible? Or is this just a symptom of the deeply pernicious sickness that was specific to the Bushies? If we - when we - get another Republican administration, will people like Bybee be excluded? Should they be? Or, if they are not, does this mean that there shouldn't BE another Republican administration until people like Bybee become non grata?

Discuss.

Shame

I am having a difficult time finding a term for those representatives of the House Democratic caucus who went along with the latest elaborate fiscal charade to pretend that the costs of fighting two land wars in Asia aren't really, like, y'know, real money an' all.

Wasn't one of the things that the Democrats swore to end these shameful and craven supplementals? Why are we still doing this? Do they think they're fooling anyone?

And, although Glenn Greenwald says it all, let's bang this particular drum a little harder:

"...voting for a bill with which they disagree out of "loyalty" to the President -- a desire "to support my president" -- is a total abdication of their primary duty. If they're going to obey the President even when they disagree with him, they should abolish themselves and transfer all of their Article I authority to Rahm Emanuel and Obama."

I have said this before to the point where I suspect that you are very tired of hearing it, but it is harder and harder to pretend that our federal political process is anything more than the elaborate rhetorical kabuki the Roman Senate indulged themselves in under the Caesars.

The vicious irony is that the insane Republicans, handed pretty much everything they got under their former leader Bush, stampeded across the aisle over some meaningless verbiage about the IMF; while the Democrats have lost their way, the GOP has simply lost its mind.

The situation inside the Beltway has truly become a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

"Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this conference report on the War Supplemental Appropriations. I wonder what happened to all of my colleagues who said they were opposed to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder what happened to my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration. It seems, with very few exceptions, they have changed their position on the war now that the White House has changed hands. I find this troubling. As I have said while opposing previous war funding requests, a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse. . . .Mr. Speaker, I continue to believe that the best way to support our troops is to bring them home from Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . Our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make us safer at home, but in fact it undermines our national security. I urge my colleagues to defeat this reckless conference report."

When Ron Paul is your voice of reason?

You're in trouble.


(H/T to Glenn Greenwald for the firebell in the night.)