Divided We Succeed
As long as we get sixty votes in the Senate.
Have I mentioned how incredibly insipid the "Divided We Fail" campaign is? I can't imagine a greater waste of money than this utterly substanceless effort to address issues relating to health care and retirement. The pitch, for those of you fortunate enough never to have heard these stupid advertisements promoting donkey and elephant miscegenation, is that Congress needs to set aside partisanship and do something. But since the groups who sponsor this misguided effort -- AARP, SEIU, NFIB and the Business Roundtable have no common agreed upon solution, what it is that Congress is supposed to do is left a mystery.
This is expensive, feel good bullshit. The only way for something to get done is for the electorate to get behind a program sufficiently to give it the muscle to get through. And that happens by one party winning a decisive enough victory that the other party is either irrelevant or cowed into submission, not some magical form of animal melding.
This campaign isn't just another offering at the altar of vacuously high-minded irrelevancy, it's also just staggeringly ignorant of recent events. There have been many examples of exactly that type of bipartisanship for its own sake these last few years. It's just that every single one of those compromises has been the Democrats in Congress extending their hands in cooperation to the Republicans, only to be (predictably) stabbed in the back and clobbered in the media anyway.
What always happens is that the Democrats come up with an idea - let's say national healtchare. The GOP position begins and stays planted at "NO." So the Democrats come up with compromises all on their own, since the GOP isn't willing to even participate in the process. Once the Democrats have frittered away a sufficient number of the plan's key components, the Republicans "agree" to it and let it pass. As soon as it does, they all go on TV - scores of GOP law
breakersmakers, lawmakers, and pundits, all complaining that the Democrats just forced socialized medicine down their throats and now the USA is going to fall apart.It's a helluva system.
Posted by: Stephen | June 17, 2008 at 06:24 PM
"...donkey and elephant miscegenation..." How appropriate - I have to admit I once kissed a Republican. And a dude who didn't believe in evolution. He didn't tell me until afterward.
Hey - I was in high school!
Posted by: Sara Anderson | June 17, 2008 at 06:56 PM
Oh Sara,
Not a Republican. I'm crushed.
Of course, if you are growing up in Idaho and want to kiss, among other things, you might have to make certain teenage accomodations I guess. (This was a definite upside to growing up in Massachusetts -- although in high school I might have kissed a Ron Paul backer if she was cute.)
I would love to hear how the evolution conversation came up.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 17, 2008 at 07:41 PM
Hey Sara, was he a Nazarene?
Posted by: Stephen | June 17, 2008 at 08:23 PM
Animal melding has been tried before. Don't knock it until you've seen a zeedonk.
Posted by: KathyF | June 18, 2008 at 12:53 AM
The half-donkey/half-elephant graphic they use in the TV ads is viscerally disturbing.
As for the message, it's just more of the same old "pox on both your houses" shit we've been hearing from the Broders of the world for ages now.
Posted by: Toast | June 18, 2008 at 04:45 AM
Kathy F.
Love the Zeedonk -- that is so fashionable looking. It's no Liger, but pretty special.
Toast,
Amen. This is truly mindless stuff -- but what pisses me off is that it is such a huge waste of money.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 18, 2008 at 07:19 AM
the "divided we fail" campaign is pretty lame. However, the "Learn More" campaign by America's oil companies is even worse. Listening to it is like fingernails across a blackboard for me.
Posted by: Joe | June 18, 2008 at 08:55 AM
I don't know what the campaign wants to accomplish (probably just some negotiated on result to committee meetings among the various groups), but it's not that bad.
Achieving big national legislation is going to be assisted by the appearance of it being a bi-partisan issue. Most of the major legislative stories involve a very united party trying to make their partisan legislative goal appear non-partisan, and thus be able to wedge enough cross-aisle votes (SS privitization, AUMF, etc). It's not a bad plan.
It would be better if Democrats in the 111th congress make sure their healthcare plan is the ONLY one on the table, and turn this "bi partisan ad campaign" into national support for the only plan available. We'll see how they do.
Posted by: Shock Mouse | June 19, 2008 at 07:33 AM