Political Notes On A Rainy Day

One more time on Cy Twombly. The New York Times had a wonderful long review of his work today as promised. He was nicknamed Cy after Cy Young and was in cryptography during his military service, which probably explains his fascination with coded writing in his paintings. While he lived in Italy most of his adult life,a woman here in Virginia talked on the radio about having dinner with him recently in Lexington, Virginia where he grew up. In the past couple of years, he alluded to his staying in Lexington for months a time.

If you want a good book on his work, including color plates of details of his paintings, Richard Leeman's Cy Twombly, A Monograph (Flammarion) fills the bill. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish today highlighted Twombly's work approvingly quoting art critic David Sylvester saying that his paintings recalled the marks on one's bed after making love. Interesting observation or fixation as the case may be.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly had a power outage today so he couldn't keep the heat on Williard Romney. At the appropriate time, the Obama campaign should make Steve the head of opposition research of Mitt--he has him down pat. Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune picked up the slack today criticizing Romney's meanderings on the economy. Think Progressive nails him for his statements that the Dodd-Franks financial reform bill went too far but then he couldn't say what was in it. This seems to be a regular pattern with the GOP. They don't even know what's in the Health Care bill for instance.

Benen's writing on Romney reminded me that I find Mitt somewhat creepy and can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's the story of him tying his labrador retriever to the roof of the car when the family went on vacation. Or his recent remark that he loves to read L.Ron Hubbard sci-fi. Maybe it is his Mormonism. One of the more interesting stories coming out of Mormonland is the dislike of the Huntsman clan for the Romneys. Is any reporter going to ask either man how much of the Book of Mormon they believe?

To reacquaint myself with the orgins of Mormonism, I am currently reading Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith", who also declared he was running for President. This book allegedly got Fawn Brodie thrown out of the Mormon religion. But reading it, I was struck how much Glenn Beck with his conspiracy theories resembles Joseph Smith, whose work of fiction/divine revelation contains all the conroversies of the time--anti-Catholicism, the whole Masonic conspiracy and the religious fights within the protestant movement. Smith was literally someone who dug for treasure in Vermont and New York State,reminding us that Beck sold gold on his show. Later he even created a bank and printed his own money. It's actually perfect Beck is a Mormon. His embrace of David Barton makes sense also as Joseph Smith was for a theocracy and didn't believe in the separation of church and state, much like Barton.

President Obama had his first tweeter on-line townhall meeting. He's good at it. He's mastered the form in responding to questions. John Boehner even tried to sneak into the act by asking "Where are the jobs?" He's a good one to ask. At the present rate, the current Congress will go down as the least productive in modern history,surpassing the record of Harry Truman's famous "Do Nothing Congress" of 1948. Compare it with the first two years of Obama's presidency. Which do you prefer?

The Obama Administration would like to play down the possibility of invoking the 14th amendment to resolve the debt ceiling issue. He even avoided the question today in his townhall meeting. But the legal community is beginning to write about this. The question then becomes what is the national debt. According to Republicans, it is what is owed bond holders. To normal Americans, it's everything owed by the government, including Social Security and pension payments. A teabagger in the House vowed that the House would impeach Obama if he invoked the 14th amendment. That would be interesting. The last two Democratic Presidents impeached. Think that wouldn't be a story.

Talk shows are commenting that Wall Street simply is not acting as if there will be a problem. Financial analysts have said they expect the Republicans won't give on tax hikes so the budget cuts will be lower than has been discussed in the negotiations, the ceiling will be raised and we go on from there.

The Washington punditry has finally caught on that the GOP might actually be mad. It's taken them over a year to realize this. Richard Cohen wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post the other day about how the GOP has become the Grand Old Cult. He remarked about the penchant of Republicans to sign on to strange lists like a pledge not to raise taxes, a pledge to prohibit abortion even in cases like incest and rape. Previous positions on climate change have gone by the board. But this town seems genuinely worried that the GOP will continue their hostage-taking because none of the GOP leadership will stand up against the teabaggers. Rand Paul has turned out to be even more unruly than his father,vowing to filibuster the debt ceiling vote until he gets his way on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I don't have the time or inclination to explain why that is an absolutely insane idea.

David Brooks must have just gotten off his book tour and finally realized that the GOP was actually nuttier than he believed. Brooks noted what Michael Steele said last year that the GOP is not fit to govern. Steele had warned Republicans in 2010 that they might win the by-election but they were not ready to lead. Brooks finally woke up to the fact that his party has no regard for academics, scholars and policy analysis of any sort.

What put him over the edge was that the budget deal offered by Obama was a no-brainer to "normal" Republicans--minimal tax hikes and massive spending cuts. David Frum weighed in that President Obama should never have gotten himself into this situation in the first place, offering to negotiate with hostage takers. I actually agree. But Brooks' remarks actually generated push-back from conservative talk show hosts and resident Very Serious Person, Paul Ryan, who touted head Wahhabist Grover Norquist's line about no tax increases. Bloggers have begun to question whether Republicans who take his pledge not to raise taxes are violating their oath of office by pledging their allegiance to a private citizen. Interesting question.

The Willard juggernaut released his fund-raising figures. We were told to expect between $25 and $30 million but the number came in at $18.5 million, less than Romney's take in the first quarter of 2007. Although this puts him light years ahead of anyone else in the field, it underlines how the Romney people play fast and loose with numbers. I guess they got the hang of the new GOP.

A 14-year old blogger going under the tag "Youngprogressive" posted his experience of asking a question of Romney in New Hampshire. He could give Steve Benen a run for his money. The blogger wanted to find out whether there was any moderate left in Romney. He said he hesitated to ask his question in the public forum because Romney was trying to imitate a teabagger. But after the presentation he went up to the candidate and asked him about his statements on repealing "Obamacare" when he had passed a similar program for Massachusetts.

Romney gave his state waiver answer but the youngster started asking him whether he would repeal the section on prohibiting exclusive of insurance for preconditions. Romney said he didn't think so and then the blogger asked about repealing life time caps, which would penalize senior citizens. Romney couldn't give him a straight answer and that's what made the boy conclude Romney was a phoney because he was too afraid of his own party to give a straight answer. Sharp judge of character. It's going to be interesting to see where Romney goes as he has to articulate real answers to real questions.

The Newt is having money woes--the campaign seems to be running a deficit at this stage of the game. I browsed through his American Exceptionalism tonight and just couldn't buy it. Alot of it is just rehashed arguments about how liberals crushed America and that Obama doesn't appreciate the uniqueness of America and basically that we must recapture our sense of our unique destiny as a nation. It's basically an update on his Obama book that criticizes the President for trying to create a socialist, secular society. With assaults on every part of our social safety nets, we might need more socialism at this time.

Pat Buchanan on Morning Joe said that the American Empire is stretched too thin and that it is going down. He gave his pithy isolationist chant that we are borrowing from Japan to defend Japan, we're borrowing from the Middle East to defend the Middle East, we're borrowing from Europe to defend Europe. Actually there is alot of truth in his sentiments. When Eisenhower faced large deficits, he cut defense dramatically. It's being suggested that this is what Panetta's mandate will be . But already the defense industries are mounting an attack against defense cuts, even though the defense budget has tripled since 1999.

Zbig showed up on Morning Joe and because his daughter is co-host, he doesn't get guff. Zbig is the first well-known figure that I can recall that has said that the enormous disparity in wealth in this country is potentially destabilizing. His point was that this glaring social fact raises questions about social justice, fairness and the nature of our society. Failure to address this creates very bad optics that lead people to question other elements of our society. He neglected to say when the tipping point would be but he suggested other such societies experience political violence. I'm glad he said it because outside the Beltway one can sense the deep frustration and anger that is building about the economy and the failure of our political system to respond to the current economic challenges. Poll after poll shows people think that the wealthy must pay a greater share than they do today.

Maybe these right-wing governors elected in 2010 know something about today's American I don't. But how long will people put up with something like Scott Walker in Wisconsin using prisoners to perform jobs once performed by public workers? How long can people tolerate Rick Scott's various give-aways to the private sector when public education in Florida is being eviscerated? And John Kasich's crimes in Ohio are too numerous to list. Does the average American continue to be rolled by these guys or will there be more than just political pushback?

Francis Fukuyama continues on his political rehabilitation. In his latest book, he describes how under the Han dynasty the wealthy actually went so far to protect their privilege and riches as to cause the collapse of China. This chapter is being dissected on the political blogs as a lesson for today's America.

Not helping his momentary rehabilitation, David Stockman, who had been approvingly quoted for challenging current GOP orthodoxy on tax cuts, appeared on the Diane Rheim show and gave a bloodless position on why a debt default might not be too bad a thing. He said that the only way Obama could overcome our economic situation is to eliminate the tax cuts for everyone,including the middle class, and convening the military to say he wanted $250 billion cut over the next five years. In the meantime, Stockman argued that a default would raise interest rates and screw those on Wall Street holding Treasury Bonds but tough. In his scenario, it was just a matter vof math, not human beings.

A book that has nice parallels today is Scott Miller's "The President and the Assassin--McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century"(Random House). Aside from the Lincoln assassination, we tend to forget other political assassinations. The book covers the election of William McKinley over William Jennings Bryan as the first election where American corporations poured money straight from their business into the campaign because of their fear of Bryan's populism. Miller reports on the 100,000 person rally in New York organized by business--the first Freedomworks Teaparty--to rally against Bryan's assault on the gold standard. The financial backing and corporations coming right out and suggesting they would layoff their workers if Bryan won overcame Bryan's lead. If 30,000 votes had switched in key states, McKinley would have lost.

But the other side of the story was that corporations were so dominant in American society that the average American faced little mobility and faced sweeping changes threatening their livelihood. One such man was the assassin Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who was inspired by the anarchist killing of the King of Italy. The assasssination did little but bring Theodore Roosevelt to power, who did embark on efforts to change the situation. The campaign funding laws restricting corporate financing of political campaigns came to past a few years later. Those were the laws overturned by the Roberts Court and we have seen the results.