The Way It Is

Smiling From The Ruins

With nearly a week to digest it, I believe I have by now mulled over the Democratic beat down of the Republicans and in particular President Bush and his policies last Tuesday long enough to have come to terms with it. I guess that is what you could call it.

Any elation over this slap in the face to the more reactionary faction of the American political spectrum – and there was quite a bit of elation, as far as I could tell, just about everywhere – should be tempered by the realization that now the Democrats are in charge. Or rather, by which Democrats are in charge.

Nancy Pelosi will be running the House of Representatives. To be honest, I have not studied her record closely enough to decide if she is really the liberal “San Francisco Democrat” the right says she is. Most sane people seem to think she is somewhat more of a centrist; but as I say, I am not sure. I am fairly certain she is not nearly as much of a zealot for the left as Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were for the right, though. Which is a good thing, in my opinion. Zealots can be interesting from a sociological point of view; but they are worth fuck-all at getting anything done once they are put in charge.

Harry Reid, who will be the majority whip in the Senate, is to me a more interesting case. He’s hardly a leftist; he is a Mormon from Nevada, for starters. He is pro-life, a strong death penalty advocate, and basically pro-gun, though not entirely along the lines of the NRA. On the other hand, he has called measures to make English an “official language” racist, has openly questioned policy with regard to Iraq from fairly early on, voted against a federal marriage amendment (against the fervent wishes of his church, and his own belief that “marriage should be between a man and a woman”), and has called the first George Bush a “great man”, but the current one “a loser.”

Reid converted to Mormonism from Judaism, and is known at home as a tough, two-fisted brawler, who has brushed up against corruption (in Nevada, I wonder who hasn’t) but has kept his public record basically clean, to this point. A character in Martin Scorcese’s movie Casino was partly based on him, and he had a cameo role in Steven Soderbergh’s drug epic Traffic.

An interesting, politically sensible fellow, then. However, unlike supposed liberal firebrand Pelosi, who has been conciliatory toward Bush so far, Reid has been far more ambivalent when questioned about how things will be between the White House and a Democrat-run Senate. Reid appears to be very much his own man, which can be either a good or bad thing, depending.

Reaction to the election results from the right have been interesting in some cases, predictable in others. Conservative demigod Richard Viguerie, in a brief appearance on C-SPAN, said that President Bush and the Republican congress have betrayed conservative values, and have dragged down conservatives with them. He bitterly proposes the conservative movement no longer allow themselves to be an adjunct of the Republican Party, and even suggests they start their own independent movement.

FOX News pundits point out that since a good many of the incoming Democrats are rather conservative themselves (relatively speaking?), the election was actually a victory for conservative values. That’s a sunny view of things.

Personally, I will wait and see. Aside from the partisan political considerations, my encouragement here comes from this idea I have that the real force behind the upheaval the elections have brought is partly the Iraq situation, okay; but on a deeper level I think people have grown weary of the sort of exclusionary and cynical maneuvering and political machination this administration is increasing identified with. Its one thing to be in power; it is entirely another to make moves to try and entrench that power beyond reasonable means; to regard a large percentage of the U.S. population as “them” instead of “us”; and to systematically rape the Constitution and in general operate in a manner more akin to a military dictatorship than an elected administration, all for petty partisan political gain. Most of us understand that, winners or losers, it is not meant to be a permanent situation; that we all have to come back in two or four years and be judged again, because in our system everything is up for grabs.

This is sometimes cited as a weakness, but I rather think not. The weakness in our system is not left-wing loonies or conservative wing nuts or a sometimes unpredictable electorate. The weakness in our system is that there are people like George W. Bush and his acolytes – who think they should always have it their way, that compromise is akin to political and ideological treason, and that any opposition to them is not only unprincipled but maybe even unpatriotic and not worthy of Constitutional protections – and that they can sometimes be put into power. Well, the fact they get voted in is not a weakness, per se; that it is like exterminating roaches to try and get them out once they are in, is.

I don’t know that the new Congress will be any better than the old one, or will last any longer than two years. To the degree that they represent an impediment to Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove’s wildest dreams, though, they will be a service to their country, and will have a longer and absolutely more positive legacy than the man currently in the White House and his minions ever will.