With the GOP presidential race in upheaval again and members of the budget supercommittee violating their own rule of silence to take public shots at one another, the Washington political gossip mill was working overtime last night.<\/p>\n
At a reception of insiders (primarily Republicans), the talk in the back of the room started off focusing on whether the supercommittee could reach agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [the committee] was designed to fail,\u201d one of the town\u2019s most astute players told me, a veteran of senior congressional relations positions in and out of the government. \u201cIt will miss its deadline. It can\u2019t possibly come to a decision. \u00a0It\u2019s going to be a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
What would be the political fallout?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public will blame everyone, Republicans and Democrats, but not the president,\u201d this sage said. \u201cThe president has distanced himself from it all. \u00a0He\u2019s said, not my idea, not my deal. \u00a0Everything is set for the blame to go to Boehner. \u00a0And it\u2019s a shame. \u00a0Boehner has really been trying to get something done.\u201d<\/p>\n
A player with even closer knowledge of thinking on the Hill had a different take.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, there will be a deal sure enough,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cBut it won\u2019t mean anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
How could that be?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll just have it take effect after 2012. \u00a0And then when the time comes, they\u2019ll ignore it and rewrite everything. This is just a way of kicking the can down the road. \u00a0It\u2019s meant to look as though something is happening, but nothing really is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others were talking about the presidential race and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich\u2019s sudden surge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with Newt,\u201d a highly ranked insider worried, \u201cis that he has no discipline. \u00a0He will go along just fine for a month or so and do really well. \u00a0Then he\u2019ll mess up. \u00a0He\u2019ll say or do something really stupid. \u00a0He can\u2019t control himself. \u00a0He\u2019ll self-destruct.\u201d<\/p>\n
This figure wasn\u2019t impressed with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney either. \u00a0\u201cThree-fourths of Republican voters don\u2019t want him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A Capitol Hill insider agreed that the race was coming down to Romney versus Gingrich.<\/p>\n
\u201cGingrich has a program,\u201d one observer sighed, \u201cbut he\u2019s insane. \u00a0Romney has his head on straight, but he has no program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we need someone who\u2019s a bit crazy,\u201d an intimate to Washington observer responded. \u00a0\u201cWe need someone who will shake things up for a term.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cRomney will always position himself at the point of political equilibrium. \u00a0He will always seek at that place. Which is why you worry about him. He shifts as that balance point shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n
He concluded, \u201cI\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the kind of president we need just now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like the rest of country, perhaps, no one sounded energized by the choices. \u00a0Instead there was a sense that, thanks to the weakness of the GOP field, President Obama might win another term. \u00a0\u201cThey are all fatally flawed,\u201d said an operative in many GOP presidential campaigns of the Republican contestants.<\/p>\n
As I listened to the handwringing, I asked myself, when before have we had moments of such impasse in Washington and such doubt about alternatives to the incumbent president? \u00a0I found myself thinking about the Buchanan, Hoover, and Carter administrations.<\/p>\n
Each served at a time national of turning, even as the incumbent was holding onto policies and ways of thinking that belonged to another period and that no longer worked.<\/p>\n
In Buchanan\u2019s case, the national appetite for compromise to avoid confronting the incompatibility of slavery with our founding ideals was over. \u00a0In Hoover\u2019s case, national economic policies of a rising industrial power no longer fit a world economic system where the other major nations had been financially devastated by World War I and ours was the lone untouched source of money and markets. \u00a0And Carter took office as the U.S.\u2019s post-World War II economic policies were in need of a major overhaul.<\/p>\n
In each instance, the clash of an administration of yesterday with a stormy present produced a period of policy paralysis, just as we have now. \u00a0In each case, the opposition had a spirited contest for succession, just as we have now.<\/p>\n
President Obama is an odd man of the past. \u00a0\u00a0In contrast to Buchanan, Hoover and Carter, he is not holding onto the recent past. \u00a0He has reached farther back to the thinking of the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s. \u00a0He is in truth a man of antiquity.<\/p>\n
Thinking of all this, I found my optimism rising. \u00a0We are in a storm, but the kind of storm that has, in our system, always preceded renewal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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