Recently I have seen articles, diaries, videos, comments, TV pundits, and on and on blaming "politics" for the debt ceiling crisis. The alternative to politics is dictatorship. Arguments, open discussion, rules of order, voting, . . . are all good. I wish the Senate would change its rules and that filibusters could be voted down with a simple majority, but the decision, which was voted on, was made not to do that.
So the debt ceiling may not be increased. So people may be harmed by that. So the theater may be repeated again. There will be an election in 2012 with an opportunity once again to select congress critters and a President. For some life may not go on. Some may come to economic ruin. The alternative is dictatorship.
The Democratic Party has a serious problem, the condition of the country is not improving. The good news is the country is not declining as rapidly as it once was. The economy is like a train going up a mountain. The train is sliding backwards and at the end of the Bush administration the slide backwards was accelerating. President Obama was able to apply the brakes so the train stopped sliding, but now the brakes are slipping. Worse he has been unable to get fuel to the engine to pull the train up the mountain. The republicans are adding more cars to the train so the train slips faster and now they want to release pressure on the brakes. Everyone sees the train sliding, but few know why.
Politics is about our representatives politicking as a means of running the country. When the politicking stops, then not only does the shit hit the fan, but the shit clogs up the fan and everything comes to a halt. So the shit is hitting the fan but at least the fan is running and throwing the shit everywhere. The alternative is to slowly (or perhaps rapidly) sink in the shit.
Compounding the problem is that "we humans quickly develop an irrational loyalty to our beliefs, and work hard to find evidence that supports those opinions and to discredit, discount or avoid information that does not." (Taken from Biased but Brilliant) If you don't believe in evolution then try "intelligent design." Then there is the belief that God clapped his hands and there was a big bang. As the article points out so deliciously science is hardly immune from this.
The point is that no matter what we say or they say shaking beliefs is damned hard. Even when people accurately predict, as Paul Krugman has, what will happen the beliefs of others cannot be shaken. If the economy declines many will say not enough was done to shrink the deficit and others, myself included, will argue that spending cuts are killing the economy. Both sides can look at the stimulus package and say two entirely different things. One is that Keynesian economics failed and the other is Keynesian economics predicted exactly what happened and if only the politicians had listened and made the stimulus package larger then all would be right. Of course both sides are wrong. In my opinion the stimulus partially worked, a larger stimulus would have been better, but much more than a stimulus needed to be done.
The biggest benefit and the worst problem with the Constitution are the same. The constitution was designed so that government functioned slowly. Thus Bush was unable to privatize social security, a benefit, and Obama was unable to adjust spending to drive unemployment down. If Obama had insisted on much larger stimulus package, then eventually republicans would have caved or worse for them seen larger democratic majorities in congress. The manufactured debt ceiling crisis is the same sort of problem. If the president does not cave he risks being elected president due to a rapid decline in the economy. If he does cave then the decline is slower and the risk is reduced. But its all politics. And politics is a good thing. The alternative is hell.