Reader Chris White comments sarcastically on yesterday’s thread:
And the other big fault of Democrats in Congress is ”¦ they’re being politicians. Of course, there are no politicians on the right. On the right there are only pure patriots who would never, ever, make speeches or pass legislation they know will be vetoed to make a political point or pander to their base. Did someone mention a bridge in Brooklyn they wanted to sell to me in a previous post? I think I could buy it and make a tidy sum flipping it to anyone who believes that, oh let’s say Trent Lott or Newt Gingrich, would never stoop to political theater.
In this case I happen to agree with Chris White. I’ve referred to Gingrich’s hubris before, in a post (like yesterday’s, the one that prompted Chris White’s observation) about the current crop of Democrats and their antiwar machinations in Congress. Here’s the quote:
….[that’s] the sort of narrow thinking characteristic of political strategists in general: they often can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s the sort of attitude that sunk the supposed mandate that Newt Gingrich and company thought they had back in the mid-90s, a kind of puffed-up hubris-by-election that tends to short-circuit whatever lingering common sense those in politics might retain.
Politicians do not have fragile egos; anyone with that particular affliction either does not enter the political fray, or leaves it early. But that means that politicians are very susceptible to thinking they have a greater mandate and greater power than they actually have.
I was a Democrat in the 90s, when Gingrich and company forced the government shutdown because they lacked the requisite votes to override a Presidential veto. I disliked the tactic then, and what’s more, I dislike it now, even in retrospect, and despite the fact that I’m no longer a member of the Democratic Party.
I don’t expect politicians on either side to ignore their manifold opportunities to take the low road and use whatever tools of power they can grab and manipulate. I’m not that naive. On the other hand, I’d rather have such a fight occur over government spending in general—which was the substance of the Gingrich move—than over defunding the military in the middle of a war that is going well, and that is vital to our present security, whatever may be the controversy over its launching.
