Elmer Fudd Politics

I am sick and tired of hearing over and over again that Obama is the most divisive president in American history.  Like most things for which he is blamed, Obama holds little responsibility for the divisiveness in American politics but makes an easy and convenient scapegoat.  The reality is that the electorate is more divided than it has been since the Civil War, because it is more profitable and politically convenient to sow the seeds of derision than it is to govern.

It is always easier to disagree with someone than it is to offer a better alternative, and this has been the weapon of choice of the GOP since 2010, when the Tea Party revolution hit Washington.  In fact, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader (who bears a striking resemblence to a turtle), came up with this whopper: "Our top priority is making sure President Obama is a one-term president."  The top priority was not bipartisanship, nor was it entitlement reform, regulatory reform, foreign policy, education reform, or anything that is useful.  To McConnell, the idea of Obama is so terrible and terrifying that there is nothing more important or pressing than to deny him a second term.

Indeed, here's McConnell on bipartisanship: "We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off those proposals.  Because we thought - correctly, I think - that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan.  When you hang the 'bipartisan' tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there's a broad agreement that that's the way forward."

To offer a course of complete non-cooperation as the best course for the American people is insulting.  Politicians campaign over and over again (as Obama did in 2008) that they will change the tone in Washington, focus less on partisan bickering, and discuss the "real issues."  How can we have a real discussion when one side threatens every bill with fillibuster, and refuses to even get its "fingerprints" on any policy proposal?  Perhaps we would have had improved legislation from this failed Congress if Republicans had been willing to work their ideas into a Democratic plan.  Presenting a bill as bipartisan does not mean there wasn't disagreement, it just means that the call to action is stronger than ideological ties.

Few people have been as critical of President Obama as Rush Limbaugh, whose fire and brimstone doomsday speeches border on madness.  To Limbaugh, anyone, literally anyone, would make a better president than Obama in his second term.  As he put it, "We are voting against Obama, Mitt Romney might as well be Elmer Fudd."  Elmer Fudd is so incompetant that he can't catch a rabbit he has been hunting for decades, yet, according to Rush, he would do a better job of running this country than Obama.  I'd turn his comment around and say that I'd much rather have Elmer Fudd as president than Mitt Romney, because I think that incompetance would be a better alternative than wilfully destroying the social safety net.

I don't support Obama on everything that he is done, and I think that he has screwed up in a number of places.  For many people, their reality today is not as rosy as it was four years ago, due to the recession and painful recovery.  But - and this is a huge but -  he was handed a situation that was impossible to solve in only four years.  When the stock market crashed in 2008, housing prices came crashing down, incomes fell, and millions lost their jobs.  Obama naively set himself higher expectations than he could possible hope to accomplish in one term, yet that is a sin nearly every politician is guilty of.  Mitt's purposeful mendacity is on a completely different plane than Obama's failed campaign promises.

The saddest thing of it all is that the GOP's chosen course of Elmer Fudd politics has succeeded.  America's two party system consists of a center-right Democratic party and a far-right Republican party that crowd out any hope for a substantive policy discussion.  Obama has bent so far to the right in an attempt to appease his detractors that he has alienated a good portion of his supporters.  Compared to Bush, Obama has drilled for more oil, coal, and natural gas, assessed fewer EPA fines, continued No Child Left Behind's accountability measures, championed charter schools, kept Guantanamo open, stayed in Afghanistan, and extended the Bush tax cuts for all wage brackets.  Whatever his secret intentions may be, Obama's record shows him to be anything but the radical socialist that conservative pundits make him out to be.

Of course, after slandering him for being a socialist, fascist, atheist, anti-American, Muslim, the talking heads turn around and call him divisive too.  And that's why I watch Fox News: the incredible irony of it all.