Turning the American Ship of State: Historical Reflections

Turning the American Ship of State: Historical Reflections

January 2, 2011

Neither Democrats nor Republicans believe that our government is truly “representative,” and this feeling is reflected in Gallup’s most recent polling. Evidence supporting this deeply-held belief is abundant. Most Americans opposed the recent Federal bail-out of the financial industry, but our representatives ignored the people and did it anyway. Most Americans wanted a public option in Obama’s recently-enacted “health insurance reform” package, but our representatives ignored us and, instead, merely passed a law ordering us to buy insurance from private companies, further enriching the vampiric health insurance industry that is the principal driver of the skyrocketing costs of health care. Most Americans opposed extending Bush’s budget-busting tax cuts for wealthy Americans, but Congress ignored the people and extended them anyway. It strains credulity to argue that our government actually represents the American people when one honestly compares the expressed desires of the people to the actions of those we elect to represent us.

What’s important to realize, though, is that this is not a new phenomenon. Our government has never represented the American people, as a whole, nor was it designed to do so.

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If our government serves only the rich, then how did we get the minimum wage law, the end of child labor, public education, the right to unionize, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a host of other laws designed to improve the lot of the many, sometimes at the expense of the rich? The simple answer is that our government moves left when the political caste believes, collectively, that it’s useful or necessary to do so. It is inaccurate to say that our government usually supports the political caste, but that it occasionally does something good for the people. It is far more accurate to say that our government always supports the political caste, but that, occasionally, the political caste decides that it’s necessary to do something good for the people. The purpose of this essay, then, is to define the conditions under which the political caste becomes “convinced” that a leftward move is appropriate and necessary. Armed with this knowledge, one hopes that ordinary Americans can work to create such conditions in order to improve their lot now and in the future.

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First, let’s dismiss what’s not essential—and that’s the Democratic Party. What has become obvious to liberals who have watched two, successive, Democratic Presidents (Clinton and Obama) regularly betray the interests of ordinary Americans is that periods of progressive reform are anomalies and not the rule, and they are not exclusive to the Democratic Party. I have argued http://www.oldelmtree.com/index.php?topic=17465.0">elsewhere that neither Democrats nor Republicans actually serve the interests of the American people who elect them. By and large, both parties serve the American political caste—almost exclusively. The Democratic Party is not now, nor has it ever been, as a whole, “liberal.” Instead, it appears that for brief periods during the past hundred years, the Democratic Party has sometimes served as a vehicle for the enactment of liberal legislation, but political will to enact reforms, on the part of the political caste, is an absolute prerequisite to governmental action for the general welfare, no matter which party controls Congress or the White House. Take, for example, the recent debate over reforming “health insurance.” Although Barack Obama proclaimed while campaigning that he considered health care “http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/07/obama-health-care-should_n_132831.html">a right” of every American, the “health insurance reform” legislation he passed leaves millions uninsured and does not even guarantee health care to those who are actually insured. A single-payer system that would have guaranteed some level of health care to all Americans was “http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=1">off the table” from the very beginning. But why? The answer is simple. Barack Obama, being the savvy politician that he is, determined that the political will did not exist within the American political caste to enact a law that would guarantee all American citizens the right to some level of health care. Who cares that 59% of physicians support a single-payer approach, according to http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/march/pro-single-payer-doctors-health-bill-leaves-23-million-uninsured">one survey? If the political will does not exist within the political caste to enact such legislation, we get an expensive band-aid that further enriches those who are already profiting mightily from the status quo. Liberal legislation that actually benefits the majority of Americans is only possible when the necessary political will exists within the political caste. While campaigning, Obama proclaimed his desire to see health care enshrined as a right. The American people responded positively and gave him an overwhelming House majority and sixty votes in the Senate. Despite this, we are stuck with the status quo because the political will does not exist within the political caste to make dramatic changes.

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The historical course of the American Ship of State has been marked by short, dramatic left turns that have been followed by long periods of stagnation and slow drift to the right. The ship has been either stagnant or drifting right for forty-five years now, but it seems likely that a sharp left turn is on the horizon. Believe it or not, http://www.oldelmtree.com/index.php?topic=12868.0">the American people enjoy more political power now than ever before. The internet, in particular, has given people of ordinary means the unprecedented ability to observe the inner-workings of their government and to contact their representatives quickly and inexpensively. The internet has also facilitated political discourse among people who, in another era, would have been excluded from our national, political conversation. Some people even believed they had purchased a President in 2008 when over two million of them made individual contributions to Barack Obama’s 2008 political campaign. Turns out they were wrong and made a bad investment, but that is no reason to believe that the people are utterly powerless in relation to a political caste that regularly ignores the concerns of the nation’s citizenry. Sooner or later, the concerns of the people will become the concerns of the political caste, through one scenario or another, and when that happens, progressive change will come. History shows that eventually the American Ship of State will make a dramatic turn to the left. If it doesn’t, it will sink like the Titanic.

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