The Day the Music Died,
—“Oh, man, yeah, it was fabulous.”
I appreciate the convenience Google provides, although I might not always admit it. Being able to go anywhere in search of anything is a great asset. However, it comes at a great price. Based on where I choose to go on my search for knowledge, Google takes the liberty of sending me where it wants me to go. Google searches are like road trips with someone you can’t stand, but without whom you might never get out of the driveway.
It’s a kind of hectic, madcap, free-for-all race to a forever changing finish line that at times resembles more a mud-race or obstacle course than a structured track event.
For this reason, I still enjoy reading a long article in a newspaper or magazine, an article maybe unable to take me to as many places, but without near the confusion or distraction. I can sit back, get comfortable and let the fingers of some Associated Press journalist do the walking as I proceed on my journey. AP becomes my tour guide.
As with any experience with any tour guide, I come away with a lot of stuff I already knew, some stuff I didn’t know, and some stuff that I already knew, but because it gets presented to me in a different context, it somehow seems new.
Such was a detailed account I recently read retelling the life of George H. W. Bush a few days after his recent death.
I was familiar with most of the story, if not all of the details. After all, I had experienced most of his public career in real time. The things that happened before my time, namely his war experience, had been told numerous times.
Perhaps, before going any further, I should note the question that I and many others have been asking for quite some time, which this article seemed to answer for me. The answer didn’t come as new information so much as old information presented in a new light.
The question: When did our politics get so bad as to cause our government to become so dysfunctional and seemingly incapable of completing even the simplest tasks?
Government has never been a fine-tuned machine. There have always been rough edges. It’s a dirty business, possibly even dirtier in our early history than today, but government has never seemed so inept. The bitterness and tribal tendencies currently found at every level of government seem extraordinary, especially considering the problems facing the nation today are not nearly as bad as some of those in the past.
There are no enemies to fear. Our economy is better than most. We are living longer and doing so more comfortably. Yet, we fight about everything. Leading these fights are the leaders we used to elect to bring us together.
We seem to be taking lemonade and somehow reconstructing bad lemons.
How did we get to this place? When did we lose our collective minds?
One answer became apparent as I read the Associated Press’ account of senior Bush’s life. It suggested partisan blame for our current problems might have originated with both the Republican Party and individuals within the party. That does not mean Democrats don’t share the blame.
When things go bad, dirt can be found on both sides. No one comes away clean from a mud fight. That said, someone has to start a mud fight.
This article was not an opinion piece, but rather factual in every sense. The opinions are merely mine, arrived at after reading the facts.
It seems the mud fight that represents our current political environment, which in turn is responsible for our current dysfunctional government, likely might have begun in the election year of 1992.
George H. W. Bush, who two years earlier had an approval rating over 90 percent, was driven from office as much by his own party as by the relatively unknown Democrat representing the less than politically powerful state of Arkansas.
Working with a predominately Democratic Congress, His administration successfully guided the nation to a recovery from the Savings & Loan debacle and waged a triumphant and surprisingly swift and inexpensive war against tyranny in Iraq. It then brokered the reunification of Germany and the peaceful collapse of communism, while enacting the American Disabilities Act that enabled millions of Americans for the first time to take a more active role in the American dream.
Presidents have been re-elected for accomplishing far less. However, in spite of all these highlights, Bush was unable to overcome the cardinal sin—at least for Republicans—of going back on his pledge not to raise taxes.
For Republicans, raising taxes after daring the country to, “Read my lips. No new taxes,” was the equivalent of Nixon pleading, “I’m not a crook,” before shortly turning out to be one.
It was treason at the party level, which would soon become worse than treason at the national level. Furthermore, it was unforgiveable. Sure, raising taxes turned out well for the country, but for Republicans, it was betrayal, pure and simple.
For those doubting the gravity and importance of the 1992 election in American political history, read the words, placed near the end of the article, of House Majority Whip, Tom DeLay.
Describing the feeling among Republicans the night Clinton beat Bush, DeLay said, “Oh, man, yeah, it was fabulous.” Later he explained that as bad as it was to put Clinton in the White House, four more years of Bush accomplishing great things with Democrats would close the door to Republican control of Congress for years to come, maybe forever.
They could run against a Democratic president in ways that would have been impossible had Bush been re-elected.
Seeing these words in print—and I can’t imagine initiating a Google search that would have brought them to my attention—but seeing them in print set in stone for me that moment when party became more important than country. At that moment, a selfish Republican Congressman was able to accept sacrificing a successful Republican president because that president’s success also bolstered a Democratic Congress.
One man may have spoken these words, but he was speaking for a party that at that moment put party success ahead of national fortune.
In a way, this behavior wasn’t all that unusual. Another Republican president, Eisenhower had long ago noted that Republicans hate all presidents, regardless of party affiliation. Attacking the president had been the Republican modus operandi going back to Roosevelt and Truman. However, never before had Republicans seemed so excited by a Republican president’s defeat.
Bush’s defeat was only the first step. Investigations into Clinton’s past began almost immediately and would continue for the next six years or, as many see it, until they found something. Eventually they unearthed a single discretion, which they tried to make the most of. The high crime of misdemeanor they tried to sell the nation never rose to the high degree of stupidity from which they pursued him. However, sinking the president wasn’t their biggest goal. They wanted control of Congress, something that except for brief periods, always seemed to elude them.
Republicans needed a catalyst. DeLay had simply made a stupid statement, much like another Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy would later admit the Benghazi hearings served to reduce Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning a presidential election. It’s always about the election for Republicans.
Back in 1994, the job of gaining control of Congress, by hook or by crook, but mostly by crook still lay before them. An equally selfish man belonging to this embarrassingly selfish party, and bearing the aptly reptilian name, Newt Gingrich, answered the call of his party.
He united his party in the mid-term elections behind the slogan, “Contract with America,” that seemed to suggest Republicans were on America’s side, Democrats somewhere else. The message has been echoed through the last quarter century to the point where today’s Republican president refers to Democrats as traitors.
Where Republicans had always fought for smaller government, Gingrich’s new tactic seemed to be anti-government. He foolishly threatened to shut down the government. He was unsuccessful, but he gave his party a tactic they would resort to numerous time.
Democrats were slow to catch on to the new bitterness Republicans brought to Washington. After a contentious election that was finally decided by a Conservative Supreme Court, Democrats still gave the republican president most of what he wanted—a tax cut, a good war that didn’t have an end-game plan, and a bad war that barely had any plan.
Regulations, always a sore spot for Republicans, were relaxed, loosened, or ignored until the Recession of 2008 forced Republicans out of both the White House and the Congress. This was a bitter pill to swallow, so Republicans didn’t.
Republicans in Congress immediately set out against Obama and the Democratic Congress that replaced them. They publicly rebuked him, questioned his citizenship, and announced they would not work with him. By this time, DeLay and Gingrich were no longer in office, but they must have been smiling.
Republicans obstructed whatever they could and what they couldn’t, they continued to rail against, so that their supporters would always know where their hearts lie.
For the last decade, we have watched states attack the institutions that used to make us great. They’ve attempted to manipulate the elections process, weaken regulatory laws, and foster distrust in government.
They were so successful that in 2016, the nation elected a president who has no use for government. As a result, our current government, even with control of the White House and both houses of Congress, has become incapable of performing even the simplest tasks.
The claims DeLay and Gingrich made against government that were untrue back them, are now true.
In his day, Johnson worked with Republicans to pass his Great Society legislation. Reagan worked with O’Neill to enact tax reform. Today, Republicans leaders in Congress can only watch as Trump, the man who hates our government, does everything he can to destroy it.
What Republican administrations have been accused of in recent elections and what we have observed being done by outgoing Republican legislatures after the recent elections only serve to promote the idea that Republicans are all about winning elections and don’t really care about governing.
The only question I have is, what Republican, looking at what the party seems to stand for, is willing to publicly mouth the words of Tom DeLay back in 1992, “Oh, man, yeah, this is fabulous.”?