CSotD: Goalposts on wheels
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Jen Sorensen isn't the first cartoonist to work with the concept that the president has gone too far for too little, or that the Republicans are being not simply stubborn but purposefully obstructive. But I like the blandness of this Slowpoke, the way the matter-of-fact depictions clash with the absurd demands they illustrate.
There are aspects of the debt ceiling crisis that I don't understand. I've been fooled by the electorate before, but are people really sitting back and thinking that both sides are making a good-faith effort on this? Are the Republicans pandering to a segment of their base that will more than counterbalance the backlash they are surely inspiring in other parts of the electorate?
Parallels to the "Contract with America," in which Newt Gingrich's allies helped him shut down the government, have been made, and that move turned out to do substantial damage to the GOP in the elections that followed. But maybe the mood of the country has changed.
However applicable that parallel, I find it more compelling to compare this process to 1972, when the Democrats pandered to the McGovern wing of their party and were not only crushed in those elections but thrown into disarray for a substantial period afterward.
I would not put too much of the blame for that debacle on the Nixon White House's efforts to derail Ed Muskie's much more moderate campaign, but I continue to feel — as I did then — that Muskie was a more credible candidate. And I would remind younger readers that, Watergate shenanigans aside, the nomination process was quite different then and parties often entered their conventions with two or three credible candidates to choose from.
This means that there was a much shorter period in which the Democrats were specifically identified as the party of McGovern. I held my nose and voted for him, not because I wanted him to become president and not because I thought there was a chance in hell that he might, but simply to try to offset the majority by which Nixon would surely win.
(I should also point out to younger readers that this was an age in which a candidate who won by a small margin felt honor-bound not to completely ignore the wishes and opinions of those who had opposed him. It was a simpler time, and there are good reasons why those of us who despised Richard Nixon — who had won the 1968 election in a squeaker — now look back on him with, if not fondness, at least some respect.)
What is happening in the Republican Party now seems like the McGovern disaster in slow motion, unfolding not just in the few weeks between the Convention and the elections, but over an 18-month period in which I guess it will either build momentum and become a juggernaut or go off the rails completely and leave only a pile of wreckage and mangled bodies.
If I were sitting in the Oval Office, I'd establish a moderate position and then dig in. There keep being hints of that happening, but the man isn't wearing his cleats and, as Sorensen suggests, he keeps slipping as his opponents push.
I'd let them show their cards on the theory that, if this is really what the American people want, November is a lost cause anyway. And if it isn't, then a demonstration of what the Republicans offer would make the elections that much easier to win.
And speaking of elections, it's hard for me to fathom John Boehner's accusation that the president is simply trying to secure a win in November. First of all, if that means "by doing what the people want," well, what's wrong with that? And, second, I think the charge would be more credible if Boehner announced that, in order to bargain more honestly, he was not going to run for re-election himself.
Or at least let McConnell say it, since he's not up for re-election this cycle.
Another historical note: The M&Ms demand is a riff on a legendary-but-real rider in Van Halen's concert contract that required M&Ms in the dressing room, but with all the brown ones picked out. (The urban legend says "green," probably because of a competing myth that the dye used to color green M&Ms was an aphrodisiac.)
According to the band, they didn't care about M&Ms, but they wanted to make sure the local promoter had read the parts in which they specified things they did care about, like details of lighting and sound equipment, because they were tired of showing up and finding all sorts of technical shortcomings at the site. If the M&Ms were in the dressing room, it indicated that somebody had read the entire contract.
I wish the demands being pushed on the president were similarly intended to make sure everything necessary was in place, and not just an attempt to force him to kowtow.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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