Fighting talk on the edge of America’s cliff
One of the things I learned as a correspondent living in America in the 1980s was that Democrats and Republicans were much more alike and interchangeable at the margins than their Labour and Conservative counterparts in Britain.
One of my best contacts was a remarkable senator from Connecticut – Lowell Weicker. He was a Republican, and yet so liberal that he was well to the left of most Democrat senators. Indeed, Weicker was eventually defeated by a Democrat, Joe Lieberman, well to the right of him, who served in the Senate until the last election. The issue that characterised their crossover politics was the Iraq War – Democrat Lieberman was one of its staunchest advocates, Republican Weicker hated every aspect of it.
Yet today, we find American politics more bitterly divided on party lines than at any time in recent history. Indeed at the very moment when western democracy in Europe is characterised by centre ground coalitions – such as our own in the UK – the savage hatred between US parties is the worst I have ever known. The fiscal cliff debate has brought it classically to the fore. Republican politicians, loathing Obama’s re-election; their failure to win the Senate; and their diminishing demographic in the country are fighting like ferrets in a sack. And it all looks set to get worse. The cliff has merely been repositioned for another fight in six or seven week’s time.
Pause a moment then for New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie who broke with the Republican recent tradition and praised Obama’s handling of the response to Hurricane Sandy during the closing days of the US Elections. Now he’s turned renewed fire on his Party for its “bi-partisan failure” in supporting a bill to bring relief to the battered residents of his state. Political students in the States will be watching to see whether Christie’s move inaugurates a new era of sanity for his party or whether the current politics of hatred are to sustain.
All this as the true scale of what confronts America has yet to sink in. The economist Paul Craig Roberts has written that the Fiscal Cliff requires the US to cut $1.3 trillion over ten years to sort the problem. But he goes on to quote from the US Comptroller of the Currency’s report from the 4th quarter of 2011 that 95% of the $230 trillion of US exposure is held by JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs.
That is surely something more like the edge of the planet than any cliff!
Oh and by the way, the FT reports today that Goldman Sachs quickly paid out some $65 million in restricted stock options to ten of its top executives ahead of yetserday’s tax hikes agreed on wealthier tax payers under the fiscal cliff agreement.
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There are 8 comments on this post
Jon,
I must admit to almost hysterical laughter whenever I get this “US bi-partisan politics” nonsense. Once again the lessons of history are forgotten, once again the real root of their politics is forgotten in a plethora of public relations guff and lies.
The party “differences” between Democrats and Republicans are rooted mainly in the Civil War and Reconstruction, and unforgotten North-South tribal hatreds. “Ideologies” scarcely enter into it. The South used to hate the Republicans because they were the party of Abraham Lincoln and the victorious Union. The North hated the Democrats because of their racist secessionism and prevention of industrialised profiteering.
This was never better illustrated than when Johnson signed in John Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act in 1964 – at which the Democrat South immediately went over to the Republicans (odd pocket excepted), where they have stayed ever since. There has even been isolated talk of secesssion (again) amongst the more crackpot Dixie loonies. That’s how tribal it is. It runs culture-deep. It is also expressed in their crazy gun laws. Most of their “arguments” against “Big Government” are based on it.
This why you correspondents stuck in Washington have no real idea of the true nature of US society. You are merely media apparatchiks with structured accredited access to the Congressional circus.
Most worryingly, UK politicians are faced down a vaguely similar road. That is, faced away from the people they are supposed to serve. But in favour of nothing but the outdated system they created themselves.
I regularly read US political & economic items on the web, with the often accompanying comments by ordinary folks. The vitriol – especially form the republican right – is vicious & often racist & mysogynistic. When you read the various blogs on both sides in relation to gun control & you feel that some people are living in a weird & rather horrible parallel universe. Coming from a small, densely-populated island with a very different history, it’s unhelpful to be too critical of the US when their traditions & history are so different. But successive UK governments (notably Gordon Brown & many of the Tory right wing) borrow so much ideology from the US, that developments there need watching. The seeds of the banking crisis through globalised deregulation & the idea that wealth is good started off there & we embraced them to our cost. Goldman Sachs’s behaviour is exactly what one could predict in such a divided country with such an immense gap in ideology. We just have to hope that people like Chris Christie can help bring the country to its senses. Politicians spend too much time messing our lives around for ideological reasons, with their opponents doing it again when they get into power. There are a vast number of areas – buth education, care of the elderly, etc where a long term deal through consensus & the involvement of experts, facts & evidence would serve the country better than the present shambles.
Gordon Brown sold the gold in 1999 to save a bank.
The 2 parties essentially make the same big choices,just different cheer leaders.
I hope you’re aware of the underlying cause: that party activists are the dominant influence on Congress reps nowadays. Partly because moderate members have got bored with the aggression of the more fanatical members, and also because party politicians control the geography of US Districts that elect each Representative.
That’s in contrast to the much lower influence and control exercised by British MPs and party members. At least for the moment in the UK.
The outcome is that the geographies of US Districts are shaped to ensure that as many Districts as possible are no longer marginals. To get elected, potential Representatives must get the support of party activists. Who are predominately more extreme than ordinary registered supporters. So, Representatives who want to be re-selected for another term – or to be selected in the first place – must ensure the support of the more extreme elements in their parties. As Mitt Romney demonstrated through thr Primaries.
So, it is the ‘freedom’ States carry that obliges almost all US Representatives to adopt more extreme and uncompromising political strategies than their electors actually want. Like those you so deplore. And so do I!
A few States do have ‘independent’ electoral commissions. But two versus 48 is insufficient to cure the ailment of which you so eloquently complain.
“Indeed at the very moment when western democracy in Europe is characterised by centre ground coalitions – such as our own in the UK” . . .
John Snow, I’m a great admirer but I never thought that I’d see the day when you became subsumed by this “Centre Ground” hegemony.
I do love your blogs. I think it’s the blend of the personal with the (often!) seer’s eye on world affairs.
I am often spellbound by the extremism of American politics. It’s like watching some horribly fascinating thriller, with a lot of gore and violence but with a cliff edge storyline unfolding (no pun intended).
This extremism has emerged in so much of American politics over the last couple centuries from the civil war to the ending of slavery, through to the gratuitous violence of the State against the civil rights movement and the election of an African-American President.
I have always been intrigued by the sentiments expressed (and symbolism priojected) by America’s ‘founding father’s; and in a sense, the greatest light also sheds the greatest shadow.
What is so disturbing in America politics is the right wing intolerance of such a ‘young’ culture. In a short gentetic memory, the average middle belt American, descended from such a diverse immigrant populatiion, escaping unimaginable struggles, has metamorphosed into a racist, needing a gun to protect an artificial culture. Reminiscent of Israel, how a relatively new country can turn in on itself and become ruthless in its defence, I cannot comprehend how destructive in outlook, these new nations appear.
I look at all news with contempt knowing everything is sanctioned by our government, where I see reporters scared to reveal the things that matter, Law firms run away from scandal and even the best like Panorama run away shouting we cannoy help.
Everything else is just rubbish as is your revelations pretending to be a serious reporter