In a banana republic, last Tuesday's election results would be considered a rising up. Fitting for Barack Obama, who turns out to be a banana republic kind of president. Note the man's very public correction of a very public statement made in front of the weirdly ethnically discrete audience Democrats seem to prefer: Obama conceded he "shouldn't have" described Republicans as "enemies," not that he hadn't meant to.
A chief executive personally and politically incompatible with America today, at half-steam and listing, isn't lost on voters. The electorate conferred a mandate in one chamber of Congress to a centennially large number of freshmen in a party flatly opposed to the president on all matters save, perhaps, pardons for would-be Thanksgiving turkeys.
What to do with that permission? Begin with examining polling data borne out by cast ballots. Nothing philosophically profound occurred this past week; Republicans cleaved to their candidates and Democrats, to theirs. Independent voters, on the other hand, heavily favored the respective Republican — not on account of party but because he wasn't the incumbent who had supported policies failing their 18-month trial. In my local precinct during Ohio's May primary, I overheard a man echoing the unaffiliated voter's protest: less passionate than pragmatic, less equanimous than agnostic.
Democratic ballot or Republican? The man had selected the former last time. Which one now? He reflected. He wasn't really a Democrat in the first place, nor did he care for the party's performance so far. "I figure I ought to give the other guys a chance," he shrugged, and six months later was joined in spirit by several million of his fellows, delivering John Boehner to congressional primacy and Nancy Pelosi to ranks of emeritus, pending.
Affirmation notwithstanding, we do not see minted Republicans having emerged: this general election was on the order of a motorist driving an elbow through his car's rear-passenger window because the keys are inside and it's late outside. Don't care what, goes the sentiment in operation here, so long as it works. Military and psephological polemics of the last decade have been displaced by more to-the-point exchanges on how to keep the electric company from killing the lights. Are you unemployed? You are hardly alone, nor will your status become unique tomorrow or the week after. Are you employed? You may have developed a tic bringing your head around for over-shoulder glances.
Words flit in the national consciousness: economy, jobs, deficit, taxes, bipartisanship.
Gross domestic product growth remains languorous and, two years since presidential epiphany, cannot be imputed to a refractory period. Assertions from the White House and associates of "jobs created" are brummagem, reaching for totals incongruent with measurable figures of a) Americans without a paycheck or b) businesses willing to provide them with one. Handing somebody a sinecure in the Census Bureau, laying him off, penciling him back onto the payroll, then crossing his name off again creates two jobs and zero livelihoods. That is statistical alchemy.
Why aren't companies hiring? Read the president's teleprompter, mental or mechanical. We knew he wanted to "share the wealth." But Obama also warns that "at a certain point you've made enough money." Health insurance for everyone over every little thing costs money: if overhead for existing employees increases by 10 percent, allocations for new employees drop accordingly. Businesses not allergic to profit recognize wage inflation when semi-skilled factory workers demand what should be otherwise earned with a master's degree — but if they attempt to reduce liabilities, Obama is poised to enjoin. What about those cheap amenities from the Third World that increase discretionary income, or maybe free up capital for a startup? Leftist economics isn't for thinking that far ahead, and CEOs know it.
The deficit remains an abstraction in concept and a rhetorical yoke in practice. Could borrowing for federal extravagance result in a colossal default someday? Athens says Yes. What weighs the most in Washington's current budget? The 2009 Keynesian adventure ending as well as Robert Falcon Scott's 1911 Antarctic expedition. Is that worth prolonging? — OK, rhetorical question. What would close the rest of the gap? Money confiscated from private hands. Would a solvent government return its surpluses? Unlikely. So impelling taxpayers to sustain government spending that is a) ineffectual and b) perpetually excessive sounds like upending a freshwater lake to quench a volcano.
As for those taxpayers whom providence, heritage, skill and luck have left better endowed — why, again, is it advisable to deny them more cents on the dollar than others? Headlines today broadcast the president's accession — not assent — to prevent income tax rates for the federal governments underwriters from rising to the higher and arbitrary pegs they hung on before President Bush wrestled the Senate for it and won. There is nothing wholesome or productive about class warfare: even if it were any of our business, the rich (high income) and wealthy (immense worth) assist others with every purchase and investment. But why stop here? Lower rates; synchronize them; pursue a flat tax. If I want the income of a lawyer or a banker or a university chancellor, I ought not leverage the state to grab it in hopes that a few bills come within my reach, but go out and earn it myself.
So, then: with all the talk of cooperation, harmony could not be in any lesser repute. The American people seek results from someone, anyone. John Boehner et al. will not be forgiven for failure any more than they will for compromise. President Obama must know that a lot of buyers are fishing for their receipt, so he may try the steps of a president once removed. Bill Clinton is a good old boy, however, a kind of conservatism; and he held the office of governor in a southern state. Obama was an editor and a lecturer and community organizer, inarguably liberal semi-vocations. But he is welcome to try and go along with it.