The United States is in a political bind. The political impasse in Washington is pointing toward a default by the United States on some of its debt obligations next week.
The Republican Party, the party of Capitalism, seems like it can't organize its elected representatives to protect the American dollar, and the capitalist structure that depends upon the dollar's credibility and strength. The leadership of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill not only lacks the ability to educate its legislative rank and file about the nature of governance and the role of the government in the economy, it has failed to mobilize its civil society allies to discipline and direct its rank and file.
I am reminded of the political conditions 150 years ago. American democracy, after decades of struggle, could not resolve politically its conflict over slavery, and the nation went into civil war. Commitment to "absolute" principles of state's rights (the conservative position then) led state after state to secede from the Union. Weren't the folks who created the Civil War -- the secessionists -- the spiritual parents of the anti-spending absolutists of today? Will President Obama rank in history with President Buchanan as supremely ineffectual in failing to mobilize the sentiment of the nation to compel a resolution to this "crisis?"
A default -- which seems imminent-- will raise interest rates. It will cost tax payers hundreds of billions of dollars that would not be spent if the default is avoided. As to the broader impact on investor confidence in the strength of the American economy in the face of such political failure, no one really knows whether we will have another stock market crash. In the absence of a stock market crash, those who have been playing chicken in driving the government and the economy toward a cliff will think they "won." Oh, dear, what stupidity!
The news media have also failed their audience. Deciding what should be broadcast on television news, the news directors can't shake their obsession with how hot it is. So a quarter of their coverage is devoted to stating the most obvious, least news-worthy condition of the day. Two words: "It's hot!" And now for some real journalism. . . What could a "deal" on the debt crisis realistically look like.
The "coverage" of the effort to find a "deal" has been remarkable for the lack of articulation about what a deal could be. No real effort to explain the reality. Numbers like $1.2 trillion dollars tell us nothing about what money is available to run the National Parks, to pay soldiers, to pay some actual number of medicare recipients some actual number of medical procedures, to incarcerate so many hundred thousand federal prisoners, to conduct so many search and rescue missions of missing boaters, etc.
The media could make this clearer by making concrete the utter abstractions in which this discussion is being carried out.
Why haven't the parties to this "negotiation" or "crisis" (or analysts hired by the news media) posted sets of giant pie charts -- one pair for each year of a proposed approach -- that reveal in some detail exactly what is proposed to be spent that year on the various government expenditures and programs, and what are the proposed sources of revenue, both by type, and by who is paying.
Then, at least, we could visualize the changes over time from the current course. We could visualize the differences between proposals. We the people would be somewhat informed about what the actual stakes of this argument are about in terms of the actual programs we care or don't care about.
As I think about the expenditures, I wonder, what do soldiers think about how the military budget should look next year, five years from now or ten. Do they want hundreds of billions spent on high tech hardware, such as hundred million dollar missiles, hundred plus million dollar aircraft, billion dollar vessels? How much war would they like us to be budgeting for? How many prosthetic legs should we planning to build and provide in order to assure that we have "boots" on the ground in Asia and Africa?
Does this "debate" seems as lopsided, incoherent, and inane as a drunken argument between the various fans of some athletic team about the blown call by a referee or some bungled play? And those who can cast votes? . . . Well maybe their insistence on voting "no" reflects their profound sense that Speaker Boehner and his team have said little that is persuasively concrete other than "I want your vote."
