REDUX: CHARLEY, IF YOU COULD HEAR IT NOW

A year ago on this date when this blog started, the first posting was a look back to l960 when our politics was less noisy and the Cold War and the threat of the Soviet Union was a unifying force for our citizenry. As stated in that posting, "Charley, if you could hear it now," this blog was inspired by a re-reading of TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY by Nobel prize winning author John Steinbeck who made a three-month journey of personal re-discovery around the country with his pet poodle Charley. In TRAVELS Steinbeck gave us his observations and musings on a range of subjects from his enjoyable visit with some migrant French-Canadian farm workers in Aroostook County, Maine, to outrage about the racism he witnessed in New Orleans when it was forced to integrate an elementary school.

One of his l960 observations that seemed particularly out of joint with 2010 when the posting was written concerned the tenor and tone of our politics. At one point in his journey he commented, "I had been keen to hear what people thought politically, those whom I had met did not talk about it. It seemed to me partly caution and partly a lack of interest, but strong opinions were just not stated." In comparing Steinbeck's comment in l960 with our politics 50 years later in the age of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Keith Olberman, my view was that "our politics has morphed from a system of low decibel pluralistic politics characterized by civility. . . to one of high decibel 'to the barricades' confrontation."

Contributing significantly to the clash and clang of our politics in 2010 was the recently arrived-on-the-scene tea party (TP) which held a puritanical view of politics; that is, you must agree with us on all parts of our governmental and social policy agenda, or you are the enemy. At the time of the mid-July 2010 posting, the country was heavily engaged in election year politics and the TP movement, created in early 2009, was pressing its issues through noisy street demonstrations and invasion of local town hall political gatherings where TP adherents shouted down any opposing views. The result: the TP succeeded in getting a number of its candidates elected to Congress. But more importantly, it succeeded in moving the Republican party farther toward the extreme conservative far right.

So in addition to its own election successes, it brought with it to Congress a number of freshmen/women fellow travelers who shared the TP view on issues, particularly its bedrock governmental agenda. That was insistence on the need for major reductions in federal spending and shrinking the size of government to prevent what it believed was unconstitutional intrusion into the country's economic and social/cultural life. The country is now experiencing the result of the TP/fellow travelers success in the current political confrontation over increasing the federal debt limit to head off a fiscal default with all of its negative consequences at home and abroad.

The most visible aspect of this confrontation is the seeming deadlock between President Obama and his Democratic congressional supporters on one side and congressional Republicans on the other side who have adopted the TP "our way or no way" stand on efforts to come to agreement on how to deal with the federal deficit and debt. The GOP way is to make huge cuts in spending but no tax/revenue increases to help cut the deficit. For Obama and his supporters, the deficit problem should be dealt with by a combination of major spending cuts with some revenue increases by ending tax advantages to the wealthy and large corporations.

But behind the very visible issue may be the more subtle struggle between House Speaker John Boehner and his ambitious Majority Leader, Eric Cantor. While Boehner may be inclined toward a compromise solution, he has been backed into a "no compromise" corner by the fiscal hawks made up of TP adherents and a significant number of freshmen House members. Cantor has made his own "no compromise" stand very apparent and has thus has aligned himself with the fiscal hardliners, with the possibility of replacing Boehner as Speaker if Boehner weakens on the "no" compromise", "no revenue increases" stand.

The highly partisan, highly visible confrontation over the debt ceiling, leavened with any personal ambitions, is just the current manifestation of the sea change that has occurred in our political atmosphere since the age of civility in Steinbeck's time. That is not to say there were no strong disagreements between the two parties in the l960 "era", there were. But it was a time when compromise was the dynamic for resolving conflicts. Today compromise is still a way out of the seeming deadlock, but the "no compromise" stand of the Republican leadership and many of the GOP rank and file has made our politics loud and ugly. Sadly, the GOP is anchored to its attachment to the far right wing of the party. And, unhappily, we don't seem to have any unifying force at work to offset that ugliness. Ah, for the good old days of the Cold War and an identifiable enemy beyond the water's edge. Today, to also redux a quote from the first posting, an insightful and prophetic statement from the old cartoon strip Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."