Chicago Loses: A Teachable Moment?

When Ronald Regan took office in 1980, it was obvious that America was wallowing in an economic and foreign policy morass. Regardless of his Administration’s actual reversal of their predecessor’s policies, it was obvious that the outgoing Admininstration was at fault. A near perfect mirror-image of that historical moment existed, certainly after September 15, 2008 and continues to this day, despite conservatives’ insistence to the contrary.

Yet Obama may finally have overplayed his hand. One can understand how he has continued to forcefully insist on forcing “health-care reform”, having latched onto that particular policy as his legacy linchpin; despite his discovery that Congress is not an ACORN South Side Chapter community meeting, he still can at least portray to the public that he maintains a semblance of control over his domestic centerpiece.

However, his having found himself caught between the rock and the hard place of a nascent Iranian revolution and Iranian nuclear power, and simultaneously being unable to even pretend to disengage himself from the one element of the Bush Doctrine he can’t publicly disavow [nation building in Afghanistan, which is even less of a nation than Palestine], he finally takes his first real public humiliation when he goes to bat for his adopted hometown’s Olympic bid in an attempt to cash in on his ostensible international standing…and was rejected.

In theory, this was the teachable moment that conservatives might have been waiting for: the President who disingenuously assured us in his inauguration speech that he was governing from the center but instead pandered abroad to an array of international interests in the hope that sycophancy would yield a desired result instead finds that approach only leads to ridicule, and we get a chastened recentered President, a la Bill Clinton circa 1995.

This, however, is highly unlikely. And it will be conservatives’ fault.

The first is that, unlike Clinton in 1992-4, there is no semblance of a viable opposition that wants to do anything except froth at the mouth. Which is a shame, because this Administration seems intent upon somehow embarrassing itself into compliance, and it night happen if the “entertainers” in the opposition would shut up for five minutes. [Yes, Chairman Steele is right; say what you will about Al Franken, he had the brass to actually run for public office. Limbaugh/Beck/Palin et al probably don’t want to part with their lucrative paydays.]

The second is that, also unlike 1992-4, this Administration’s margin for error is HUGE; specifically, because of their unter-supermajority in both Houses, it would take a true catastrophe to make any immediate electoral impact, in 2010 or 2012. No matter how low the approval numbers sink, this country remembers the alternative all too well: the one they took 2 election cycles to vote out.

Either way, it seems the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin wing of the party will get at least half its wish: the President will fail. The other half? That he will actually get reelected, and the failures pile up—as does Limbaugh’s bank statements.

One begins to wonder if an inability or refusal to learn is a prerequisite for political [or, at least electoral] success.