The Game of Politics

posted at 8:23 am on November 23, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Media ]   

Before the big (ugly) game(s) yesterday — referring to both the Steelers and the Jets — I tuned in to the “other” Sunday game, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. I mean this as no aspersion on Wallace, who I frankly think is one of the best (read: impartial, informed, incisive) hosts out there. Rather, it’s the weekly tug of war between immovable forces featured on his program, which lately has left me saying WTP: What’s the Point?

Yesterday’s cast of characters included the tag team of Lamar Alexander and Kit Bond on the right and Debbie Stabenow and Arlen Specter on the left. (For Specter, I suppose the correct classification is “on the left for now,” since he seems to swivel left and right with each new zephyr.) The topics included health care reform and Afghanistan, but they could have been anything. What you got from each faction was the standard party line.

I still found myself agreeing with more of what the Republican guests say because it is more in line with reality as I understand it, but I’m bothered by either side treating this as a game rather than a frank conversation about the nation’s future — whether, in fact, it will have one.

It was hard to imagine what Specter was thinking when he echoed his party’s leader’s false claim that Republicans want to do nothing regarding health care (and global warming, but that’s another story). The irony is not only that Specter was himself a Republican (or at least a RINO) recently enough to make such a declaration risible but that Kit Bond had just recited a half dozen Republican bullet points on the topic. Specter is perhaps to be forgiven for he is old, old, and probably has no idea what city he’s in any more.

But how about the rest of them? How do these people, elected officials and spin doctors, show up with straight faces week after week to spout untruths in the hopes that they will win another convert to “their side”? How is the notion of “sides” even relevant when so much is at stake? This question goes double, maybe quadruple, for Democrats. I say this not because I am not one of them — in fact, I used to be. I say it because they allowed a man to rise up in their ranks who was and is radical and untested — all the telltale signs of an unmitigated disaster in the making. He went on to win the Big Game for them (for reasons that deserve a column all their own) and is now tarnishing the Trophy with a bunch of half-baked ideas. And how are his teammates reacting?

With exchanges like this one from yesterday:

WALLACE: Shouldn’t Congress be devoting more time to trying to resuscitate the economy?

STABENOW: No, Chris, because blah-blah-party-line-blah-sheer-nonsense-blah. . .

Maybe a first step to ending The Game would be to add salary caps for elected officials. Would Arlen Specter, age 103, be this hell-bent on being reelected to an 80th term if the job carried no perks and an annual salary of $40,000? Would any of them?

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