Call me crazy, but I wonder if the political class should take a break from its glorious orgy of self-loathing, put down the razor blades and start focusing instead on what Washington has gotten right.
I know that sounds ludicrous after watching the chaos of the past few weeks. But seriously ? did anyone who understands Washington ever doubt that after exhausting every other single possibility, America?s leaders would finally come around to doing the responsible thing?
Continue ReadingI didn?t doubt this outcome for a second.
Maybe that?s because I have spent my entire life listening to people complain that their generation of politicians was the most reckless, selfish and stupid in American history. I?ve also spent decades hearing predictions of how Washington?s dysfunctional ways would lead to our nation?s collapse.
My first political memory was the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. After that, Kent State was followed by Watergate and America?s loss in Vietnam. Those dominoes fell in such rapid succession that you could forgive my fifth-grade teacher for delivering the happy news to her students that the United States of America was suffering a rapid decline much like fifth-century Rome.
This narrative involving America?s imminent collapse continued throughout high school when Iranians stormed our Embassy in Tehran, gas prices shot past the $1 mark, and interest rates raced toward 20 percent. Indeed, the America of my high school years was deeply troubled.
I was led to believe that things could get no worse until I spent my entire college career having professors decry the Age of Reagan as the darkest chapter in U.S. history. Not to be outdone, my law school professors would grumble later that George H.W. Bush?s fecklessness was destroying America?s economy in a way that ensured Japan?s ascendency and our country?s spectacular fall.
By the time Bush 41 left office, the economy was experiencing an uptick and Silicon Valley was creating a revolution that would leave Japan in the dust.
But within a year, media outlets lamented Bill Clinton?s incompetence (?amateur hour,? declared Newsweek), and his opponents challenged his moral fitness for office, with some on the fringes going so far as to accuse the president of murder.
Clinton?s collapse led to Newt?s rise, which in turn led to the GOP?s collapse which in turn led to Clinton?s reelection. That, of course, led to Clinton?s impeachment in 1999.
Democrats, the media and the liberals who dominated the media declared this to be the most heinous offense committed in the history of American history, until the next year, when the 2000 election ended in turmoil.
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