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Excellent post, Raddoc. I think you summed up the frustration and anger of the American people, which I believe is not heard by either party: each gets wind of their disenchantment and instead of taking it as the shock to their sense of mandate it should act as, they use it to continue the partisan one-upmanship, focussed solely — really — on their own (party’s) political aspiration. The public is never heard.
Meanwhile out here where the air is clear, not fogged by the dreamy, heady psychosis that is Washington, we can see clearly the problems, often their solution, and how dire the situation is becoming.
We are really becoming, as Krugman said, not Rome at the end, but Poland…slowly stewing to death in bureaucratic paralysis.
I thank you for your When-in-Rome analysis of party affiliation, too. I’ve thought it was some wishy-washy character flaw, but now I see it’s a normal function of society (our surroundings help us define ourselves): I notice I become much more liberal in the company of raving, spitting rightwingers, whereas I grew up uncomfortably trying to hide conservative leanings in rebellion, I thought, against my ultra-liberal (SF Bay Area) surroundings.
All along, it’s been an instinct to moderate the extremes and argue for balance, so that we can accomplish lasting solutions that won’t (need to be) gutted and overturned by the next administration.
