As I watch the Republican party, a political group devoid of constructive governing ideas or sensible election policies, lashing out like a mad dog, snapping at everything and everyone that is unlucky enough to get within range of their festering, rabid, teeth, I am forced to ponder the waste of money and energy that has usurped the American political scene.
Neither party is doing its job. The Republicans, instead of creating governance worthy of the “loyal opposition,” revel in a festering hatred of the president. The Democrats, instead of fathering legislation that will drag our staggering country out of what is left of the crushing turbulence of the Bush disaster, sit, dumbly, uselessly, a group of fearful, non-functioning slugs.
Obama, wanting to be a statesman or at least a functioning president but unable or unwilling, to play the game of politics in ant kind of meaningful way, resorts to empty rhetoric and covering the fumbling tracks of his tragically inept appointees.
No one wants to or knows how to lead. There are no political entrepreneurs, only pathetic little cheap shot artists, trying desperately, hopelessly to gnaw away at the underpinning of those above them with the futile goal of replacing then without endangering any small thing that they may already have achieved.
We can look back to the early years of the Bush administration to see the last possible vestiges of a loyal opposition, when nudged by the horror of 911 certain democrats ignored the lies that were being told them and gave Bush/Cheney their head to plunge us into two illegal wars. Democrats like Hilary Clinton may have been attempting to be patriotic, may have been living up to a tradition of putting country before party that goes all the way back to the revolution but they, unfortunately ended up looking like fools and the Republicans seeing the fate of their altruistic opponents seem to have vowed to always in the future put self before anything else.
Before that unfortunate instance we have to go all the way back to the Reagan years to find a really significant example of serious politicians actually putting country before party and unfortunately, it was again an instance in which they, or Tip O’Neil, in both cases, who should never have made the sacrifice. Because in doing the noble thing, he was unalterably wrong.
I am referring to that time, 35 years after WWII and 25 before today’s messy political scene when Ronald Reagan was busy double-dealing with both hands. It was a time when a US president was so busy ignoring he safety of our troops, and the limits of his constitutional powers that he made today’s phony attacks on Obama to petty to even be considered.
Right now the Republican party is frothing vat the mouth over an attack on a CIA post in Benghazi in which four Americans were killed because the CIA, our supposed intelligence organization didn’t know enough about what was going on at their own installation to tell the White House what had occerred and who was causing the problem..
Let’s compare that to te morning of October 23rd 1983 when a truckload of high explosives was driven through a flimsy fence past two unnamed guards and blew up a four story US Marine barracks at Beirut airport killing more Marines than at any time since Iwo Jima. What were the Marines doing in Beirut? Why weren’t they armed so that they could, in a war zone, defend themselves?
Reagan had sent them to Beirut to protect the airport during the murderous civil war of 1982, For some idiotic reason he had demanded that though they were in the middle of a bloody war, that they not appear warlike, hence, the fact that none of them carried armed weapons. Reagan also kept them from raising fortifications or perimeter fences. Congressional Democrats and his own Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger tried unsuccessfully to stop him in this folly, pointing out that the marines had no business at that airport except to be targets. The American press viciously attacked Reagan.
The night after the attack at a meeting of the cabinet and the joints chiefs Tip O’Neill stopped Reagan from making a fool of himself and offered sympathy and support that even Howard Baker the Senate Majority leader saw and understood as above and beyond the call of the loyal opposition. O’Neill knew that this was not a time to make political hay, that this was a time for all American’s to stand together for the sake of the country. It seems that no one in the GOP has gotten that message today.
A few years later when Reagan was caught red handed selling missiles to Iran to fund Nicaraguan terrorists trying to overthrow a legitimate government, he had already been warned by Secretary of State George Schultz that what he was doing was an impeachable offense. When he got caught he looked directly into TV cameras and told the American people that he knew nothing about what had been going on. A week later the press found unimpeachable evidence that he had been lying to the nation. Instead of nailing Reagan and his henchmen, the Democratic congress took the path that they thought was best for the country and avoided impeachment for the good of the country. They had him. They had him better than they’d had Nixon but they thought it was better for the country to let him serve out he rest of the presidency. Contrast this with the current bottom feeding Republican party that went after Clinton because of a sexual indiscretion and is now ginning up to go after Hilary for something that her husband did to her.
Those Republican’s, oh what a bunch of sweethearts. Makes one feel warm and cuddly all over don’t they?