Bachmann and the Budget Buccaneers
There is a wonderful bit in The Philadelphia Story. It’s the morning of the wedding, and a
couple of hangovers are being nursed. Things
are tense between Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) and her fiancée, George
Kittredge. Kittredge is understandably upset that the somewhat tipsy Tracy has
just had an “affair” with another man, Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart.) George
demands an explanation, and Connor obliges. “Mr. Kittredge, it may interest you to know that our
so-called affair consisted of exactly two kisses and one rather late swim both
of which I thoroughly enjoyed and the memory of which I wouldn't part with for
anything.” When Tracy protests by asking
whether she was so unattractive and forbidding, Connor replies she was very
attractive, and as for forbidding, on the contrary, but she “was also a little
the worse for wine, and there are rules about those things.”
All
of us know that there is no way that Jimmy Stewart would ever break the
rules. He’s Jimmy Stewart, an exemplar
(as was Henry Fonda and, in a different way, John Wayne) for a type of
distinctly American integrity. There are
things you don’t do, no matter how tempted, even if you can, and sometimes
especially because you can. I love those
rules, not just because I’m the father of a teenaged daughter, but also because
I’m a social contract kind of guy. I think
democracy works best when there is little less purity and a little more give
and take. If one side is picking up all
the chips, just because it can, the losers are just going to be lying in the
weeds, waiting for the first time there’s a kneecap exposed.
Up
until about twenty years ago, Washington was populated by people who also
believed in the rules. That doesn’t mean
they were saints. Rather, they shared a
consensus about basic facts, how things should be done, and what regular order
meant. They horse-traded, swapped votes,
shared earmarks, fought when they had to, and compromised most of the
time. There were always crazy people and
rules-breakers; the Republicans had their Bob Dornans and the Democrats their
Cynthia McKinneys, but policy was made from the center out, not from the fringe
in. People respected the process.
That
was then. We live in different times,
where craziness is now seen as a desirable attribute and rules as almost
corrupt. This past week, one of the truly great rule-breakers, Michelle
Bachmann, announced that she would not run for reelection in 2014. Her eight-plus minute announcement, posted on
her website, is a classic of the Bachmann genre, and I urge you to drink it in. The thumbnail version is a hard slap at the
mainstream media, of which she is the victim; several over-the-top slams at Mr.
Obama in particular (“despicable”) and the Democrats in general, a large dollop
of self praise for supporting both a balanced budget and the pork for her
District, and her personal bravery in calling out Muslims everywhere.
Of
course, Bachmann is not the type of person of whom you would expect either
great self-knowledge or modesty. But to demean her is to ignore her obvious
appeal to a portion of the GOP electorate, bizarre utterances or not. Remember,
this is a person who won the Iowa Caucuses, and who briefly led in the primary
polls. She did so by laying out a
program that distinguished itself by it’s uncompromisingly hard right approach
sprinkled with enough sheer kookiness to satisfy the paranoid set. Bachmann is the surströmming of the political
system. Some people, unaccountably, really
like it.
Bachmann,
for all of her national prominence, was a particularly ineffective
legislator. In her eight years in
Congress, her record is completely devoid of any accomplishments. That,
unfortunately, is in concert with much of the rest of her caucus. The House these days seems to exist for
only two purposes, a) to obstruct, defund, and repeal Obamacare and b) to
conduct endless investigations.
What about the budget?
Well, the House did vote out a budget, the steroidal Ryan Plan. But the Senate won’t cooperate. Senate Democrats also voted out a budget, as
the GOP demanded, and it included Mr. Obama’s proposal (thoroughly loathed by
liberal groups) for a substantial hack at entitlements. Like the House’s version, it also passed on a
party line vote.
So, now we have two bills, the House’s GOP version, and the
Senate’s Democratic/Obama version. Next
stop, the “Conference Committee” where senior members who are appointed by the
presiding officers of the committees that originally dealt with the bill are
sent to bargain and hash out a compromise.
Sounds good; maybe the Congress can actually do the job we send them
there to do?
Not so fast. Having a Conference requires Conferees. And the Senate doesn’t have any. Why?
Because three Republican Senators say no Conferees until the Democrats
who go agree not to utter the phrase “Debt Ceiling.” And, why the gag order? Because these three have no intention of
bargaining in good faith. Instead, they
want an extra bite at the apple: concessions in the Senate, more in Conference,
and then even more extortion when the debt ceiling has to be raised. They don’t
care that the Senate just voted and they lost.
Like pirates, they will hold the sword to the throat of the damsel in
distress until they get what they want, process, and rules, be dammed.
Now, you might ask yourself who these hostage-taking buccaneers
might be? Three Men of Tea: Utah’s Mike Lee, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and
Marco Rubio of Florida, supported by the ever-amiable Ted Cruz of Texas. That is
a lot of ambition in one room. Paul and
Rubio really want to be President, as soon as possible, and this the way to
raise their street-cred with the hard-right gunslingers. Cruz doesn’t need more street-cred, but he
aims higher--more in the Henry VIII line of King and Supreme Head of the
Church. By the way, in case your were counting, these four have a combined six years in office.
What about Mitch McConnell?
He knows what the rules are. But
he’s also worried about a primary challenge in Kentucky, so he’s met privately
with the four almost a dozen times, and is tacitly supporting them. In the
meantime, the country will just have to wait. Personal and ideological agendas are far more
important than the national interest.
In fairness, there are a number of other GOP Senators trying
to find a common ground. Senators McCain, Collins, Corker, and Blunt are
pushing back. There is concern among
rational conservatives that scorched earth can’t support any type of life. And, because these are practical people, at
least most of the time, they understand that you fracture the bargaining
process when you keep moving the goal posts, and you do so at your future
peril. You don’t necessarily have to go as far as Churchill, who once said “If Hitler invaded hell I
would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” But sooner or later, the shoe will be
on the other foot, and people have a funny war of remembering who stepped on
them. Rules matter.
That doesn’t always mean it’s pretty, or you will want to
send flowers to the other side. As much
as I love Hepburn, Stewart, and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story, some of the best lines come from Ruth
Hussey, who plays Liz, Stewart’s savvy and occasionally sardonic photographer
and girlfriend. After Connor defends Tracy’s honor and pronounces
his devotion to the rules, she follows with “I think men are wonderful.”
And Liz responds “The dears.”
The movie does have a happy ending. Maybe we should send the DVD?
MM
