American Extremists: "Nightmare in November"
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posted by Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy at 12:01 AM
Friday, July 27, 2012
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http://www.salon.com/2012/07/27/most_likely_to_attack_iran/
"The unilateral use of force in the Middle East for a liberal Democrat like Obama is a credential; for a conservative Republican like Romney, it could be an albatross. I argued in a previous column that Romney is more likely than Obama to oversee a revitalized Middle East peace process. That’s because conservatives are better positioned to make peace; liberals are generally better positioned to launch preventive strikes at the nuclear programs of rogue nations. We know that U.S. voters, and world leaders, allow Obama extraordinary leeway when it comes to deadly drone strikes, precisely because of his politics, character and background. (We are talking about a man, after all, who won the Nobel Peace Prize while ordering the automated killing of suspected Muslim terrorists around the world.) Romney will get no comparative slack."
I've decided to put a Jill Stein yard sign up. I'm on a busy street, so I hope this qualifies as de-supporting Obama. (I'll vote for her, too, although I think that means less)
The Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution should be repealed because of its anti-democratic nature. There were more than enough impediments to democracy in the Constitution prior to enactment of this amendment.
The measure of democracy in a system of government is its ability to make its laws, its policies, its office holders, and all things it embodies that are toxic to the people, go away without reverting to means external to that system of government.
First term elections must be won on promises and personality. Second term elections should have a chance to be won or lost on the recognition of policy successes and failures as experienced by the electorate. The exclusion by an elite of third party candidates from debates and news coverage as being not viable is extended by a further exclusion of candidates from consideration for a third term and beyond.
The negative feedback of policy repudiation by the public was—prior to enactment of the 22nd Amendment—a major influence available to the general public to exercise on policy, as known to the people by the consequences said policy on them.
The ability to win an election campaign is comprised of a different skill set than the ability to govern effectively and accountably. The power to repudiate is a much greater power than the power to elect; this is the choice between promises and performance, the choice between the unknowable and the known, the choice between what one surmises will happen and what one knows has happened. It is important to democracy to be able to repudiate a policy by repudiation of its proponents, rather than to endure the selling to an aggrieved public a new face and name still supportive of an old failed policy’s maintenance.
Consider the primary challenge George W. Bush could possibly have faced, with all of the policy failures associated with his administration, and his inability to overcome his negatives with public relations spending in 2008. Bush has now been repudiated by his party as evidenced by his lack of an invitation to speak at the 2012 Republican convention. If Bush had been repudiated, either in his party’s 2008 presidential primary contests or in his 2008 presidential election campaign, I ask, could Obama have so fully embraced the continuation his predecessor’s failed policies after their very thorough and public repudiation?
Can a vote for Obama now be interpreted by Obama as anything other than a reward for a job well done, as an invitation to continue doing what he has been doing? This is the result of absence of feedback in a government insufficiently regulated by the negative feedback of democratic influence. The absence of negative feedback enables the moral hazard of the financial fraud committed by the financial aristocracy—that which supported Obama’s election—and is now enabling the possible election of another one of its beneficiaries. Negative feedback is an absolutely necessary condition, whether by law enforcement or by lawful election, to making a course correction. The ability of the elected leaders of a democracy to stand before the electorate to be judged should not be constrained by the private interests of an elite.
Hi VL,
Delete these if they are too long or seem to be off topic
The continuous threat of repudiation by the voting public is necessary component of democratic influence on this corporately dominated republic that was eliminated by the Twenty-Second Amendment. The possibility that a decision by the people could keep a president in office for third term would make a president’s second term a chance to continue making corrections to first term policies that did not produce results satisfactory to the electorate upon whom these policies were imposed. A second term without consideration of the impact of negative feedback—the absence of a possible repudiation at its end— amounts to a victory lap. Had George W. Bush won a third term would he be able to win a fourth term without a sound repudiation of himself or by his party? Could a party that supported him through this disaster have any hope of winning another election? Could Bush have won in 2008 as many votes as McCain did? Could the failed policies of Bush been given new life without finding a new face—such as Obama’s or McCain’s in the presidency—when the personal experience of the people would be at such variance with presidential campaign ads? I believe Bush would have lost, just as McCain lost, and he would have lost on failed policies, the same policies of the unaccountable financial aristocracy now embraced by Obama.
The Democratic and Republican parties were both opposed to Roosevelt’s accommodations to the interests of the impoverished—as limited as they were— and accomplished in the face of the financial aristocracy that funded the majority of both party’s elections. The project of both parties since has been the undoing of restraints on the political insiders of the financial aristocracy to the detriment of the political outsiders— the majority of the public—who have had their democratic impact diminished by the removal, by insiders, of their political right to the sound repudiation of proponents of policies detrimental to the interests of the people.
This further restraint of democracy brought by the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution removed a power of the people necessary for their interests to become a matter of national consideration: this is the possibility of a sound repudiation of policies that serve a politically powerful minority at the expense of an otherwise politically impotent majority, one rendered impotent by the lack of ability to vote for candidates of their choosing by many considerations, among them being the 22nd Amendment.
Mark, that definitely sounds like desupporting Obama. Why wouldn't it?
Glenn, your comments were intriguing - I've never thought about term limits in those...well, terms! :) Thanks for sharing and thanks to VL, too. I always come away from the blog with new ideas floating and percolating in my brain.
Just a tease.
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