Dear Readers,
Legendary former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill's famous bromide, that "All Politics Is Local," looms even larger on Dec. 31, 2012, than Tip could have imagined, whenever he said it.
The following story stars President Andrew Jackson in 1832, and
columnist Nate Silver in 2012:
______________________________________
The following story stars President Andrew Jackson in 1832, and
columnist Nate Silver in 2012:
______________________________________
The current malaise on Capitol Hill, which has you & me contemplating a vote against every incumbent in whatever is the next election, reminds us not to lose our focus on THE REAL CULPRIT -- local, provincial anger & bias, fueled mostly by Fox News, MSNBC, and Talk Radio ["90% hard conservative" according to a recent media study].
General Andrew Jackson
Way back in 1832, during Andrew Jackson's 2 biggest crises as president -- South Carolina's tariff nullifications, and AJ's defiant veto of Congress's bill to renew the 20-year charter of the 2nd Bank of the United States -- President Jackson reminded the nation that he [and his vice-president, if John C. Calhoun hadn't resigned in a South Carolina huff over the 1832 Tariff] were the ONLY federal elected officials whom every voter in the whole country had a legitimate chance to vote up or down. And this made the President's voice the most authentic measure of the whole nation's democratic popular will -- NOT a bunch of what FDR in 1936 dubbed "a few willful men" who at most represented just one Congressional district, with all its indigenous selfish biases.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: The G.O.P. deserves way more blame for our current "Fiscal Cliff" debacle than
Barrack Hussein Obama.
But, that said, Obama's main weakness is failing to point out, repeatedly,
Andrew Jackson's 1832 point -- fundamental to the way our democratic republic is supposed to work.
Barrack Hussein Obama.
But, that said, Obama's main weakness is failing to point out, repeatedly,
Andrew Jackson's 1832 point -- fundamental to the way our democratic republic is supposed to work.
Instead, this task is left to a freakin' newspaper columnist:
The fresh new Nostradamus of U.S. politics -- The New York Times's now-famous "FiveThirtyEight" Columnist NATE SILVER, who correctly predicted the election results in all 50 states despite all the absurd Fox Noise fed by Rasmussen and even Gallup pollsters.
It is columnist Nate Silver who has had to make the Andrew Jackson point FOR Obama.
The fresh new Nostradamus of U.S. politics -- The New York Times's now-famous "FiveThirtyEight" Columnist NATE SILVER, who correctly predicted the election results in all 50 states despite all the absurd Fox Noise fed by Rasmussen and even Gallup pollsters.
It is columnist Nate Silver who has had to make the Andrew Jackson point FOR Obama.
And here it is. So elegantly simple, as nearly all of Nate Silver's research has been:
The U.S.A. is victimizing itself by allowing its most extremist local ideologues -- represented in the national
House of Representatives and the Senate -- to hold hostage the whole democratic republic's
Nation-wide Popular Will!
If you have read nothing else in 2012, Dear Readers, please read Nate Silver's one column above, and weep.
As Walt Kelly's Pogo said in the comics, "We have met the enemy, and they are us."
As Walt Kelly's Pogo said in the comics, "We have met the enemy, and they are us."
No comments:
Post a Comment