The debt ceiling limit crisis has revealed one fact: the current political class of leaders who are largely from the Baby Boomer and post-Baby Boomer generations could never be confused with “The Greatest Generation.” The Most Partisan Generations? Perhaps.
Based on what is leading up to that fateful day of Aug. 2, our political class — weighted down by Baby Boomers’ hubris of Vietnam-era divisions and Richard Nixon’s Republican base-transforming “Southern Strategy,” plus post-Baby Boomers’ being influenced by no-compromise talk radio and ideological news programs — gets a D.
If the grade becomes an “F,” our country may not even be able to afford dunce caps.
Nowhere was this on display more then when President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner gave dueling television speeches on the politician-created debt ceiling limit crisis that threatens to wreak havoc with the American and global economies. Obama correctly noted that compromise has become “a dirty word” among some Republicans and played to his party’s liberal base on taxes. Boehner hurled zingers at Obama and played to his party’s absolutely-no-compromise Tea Party base.
The most perceptive comment on the appearances came from University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato who Tweeted: “I’m sorry to hear ‘the entire world is watching’. America has rarely looked more foolish…Dems think Obama did well. Rs think Boehner did well. And in a nutshell there’s the problem.”
You wonder: 235 years of American history have brought us to THIS with these kinds of leaders so incapacitated by partisan ideological boundaries? Whatever happened to consensus, statecraft, coalition-building and smart politicos who could lead their partisans to a greater national goal?
Both parties’ leaders are locked in ideological boxes that their bases won’t let them exit. The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan sees what is unfolding as part of a “cold” Civil War: “This Nixonian achievement has turned the GOP into the party of the South – a minority country within a country. With no ability to communicate within the Democratic Party to bring the South and the rest of the country together, we have stalemate.”
Former CBS Political Producer Brian Goldmith argues that Washington isn’t really broken, the GOP is. And it’s not that simple.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.