TRYING TIMES

Trying Times would like to posit to all those looking for reasons why the Republicans failed policies have led to record setting low approval numbers need look no further than...the Republicans failed policies. The tide of public opinion against the president isn't because of media and spin, its despite media and spin. While there can and should be debate over the validity of Democratic alternatives, there really is no doubt that after 6 years of basically uninterupted Republican power we finally have a clear window to view their failed ideology. Preemptive war? Whatever one's argument for the morality of bringing Democracy to other regions, we can see that the actual logistics of such measures are perhaps beyond the scope of America's power and will. Lower taxes? Well, we have a decent economy, but its worth examining what we really want out of our economy. The highest possible job production is something both conservative ideologues and Trying Times could agree on. But America's job production is no higher now than the Clinton years, when taxes were higher. The other main goal of an economy should be to produce a wide and inclusive middle class, something that the Republicans ideology of tax cuts at all costs does not seem to produce. It appears that after six years, the American people realize that what we've got is a system that's headed mostly in the wrong direction, and is almost singularly the responsibilty of the Republican Party. The point here is to stress that in an abstract sense promoting Democracy sounds good in campaign stump speeches and touting a lean, efficient business sector looks good on an Economics professor's Power Point presentation, in the real world people get lost. The Republicans basically fell trap to the same utopian, moralitic thinking that led to the downfall of the Democratic Party. Instead of the end of poverty and racism, it was Democracy for all! Jobs for everybody if we just stop paying taxes! Please. They might as well have sang Kum-bay-Ya. Realism will win out, as it always does. Realism requires compromise, which is something the Republicans failed ideology will never embrace. More importantly, realism requires an honest assessment of what we can actually accomplish, which is way outside the bounds of today's political discourse. Republican Utopianism won some elections, and perhaps will continue to do so. But its a political strategy that requires bad policy. War in Iraq just to win a Republican Majority, for instance. So, as the right continues to look for "reasons" they are not doing well these days (The Liberal Media? Democrats? Hippies? Immigrants? Gays? The Liberal Media?) they will continue to ignore the fact that government without compromise is doomed to failure (the beauty of democracy). Meanwhile, the rest of us can look for Nicole Simpson's real killers...

Its hard to determine which possibility would be worse concerning the latest revelations of incompatency to eminate from the diaries of our current presidential administration: The situation where Bush decides to declassify information that was used simply to damage a political opponent, or the other probable scenario, wherein he claims he didn't know what information would be used and for what purpose? If he did know what the information was and how it would be used, then he is the leaking culprit he's been trying to find. What a relief it must be to find that foul leaker no further away then the lincoln bedroom mirror. If this scenario is correct, then he was a willing participant in using classified information to attack a fellow American who disagreed with his false assertions about Iraq's nuclear capabilities. If he didn't know what was being declassified, and he simply allowed Libby and Rove to use information they wanted at their own discretion, then how could that info actually be declassified? Doesn't the president have to know what information is being declassified in order to declassify it? Can he just say "sure, use whatever info you need, its declassified, I just don't want to know what it is or how you're going to use it"?. That seems like gross incompatence, not to mention highly unlikely. Surely legal scholars will weigh in on this subject, in both opposition and defense of the president's odd and deceitful behavior. In either case, however, we should remind ourselves that the president either declassified a National Intelligence Estimate simply to discredit Joseph Wilson's assertions (which turned out to be correct), or he negligently handed out a highly classified NIE briefing without knowing what it was or how it was going to be used.