Letter 2 America for November 1, 2013

Dear America,

I heard something interesting on the news the other day.  We all know that the appropriations process in Washington, D.C. doesn't work very well these days, but what I didn't know is that congress is supposed to pass a dozen appropriations bills every year, and they haven't done that for the past four years.  The reason apparently is that since the Republicans made a big show of superficial integrity by banning "earmarks" from those appropriations bills, and from all other legislation as well as I recall, so that now, without inducements in the form of earmarks, they can't pass appropriations at all.  In other words, without a bribe, you can't get anything done in this Republican congress.  Sounds a little "third world" doesn't it.  Mind you, the idea that there should be pet projects attached to every spending bill, much less to other bills about unrelated subjects, seems corrupt and contrary to the concept of modern democracy--that "what's in it for me" attitude doesn't feel like a good policy making tool in the government of a country that prides itself on egalitarianism and following the straight and narrow path--so I applaud the Republicans for their effort.  But unless the party members...and Democrats as well...accept the "no earmarks" policy in terms of political morality, if political morality isn't an oxymoron, passing the policy was a Pyrrhic victory at best.  But that isn't the first instance of our congress taking policy steps that do not redound to the efficacy of the institution in the end.

For example, recently the Republicans were holding up so many presidential nominations for leadership positions in the executive branch that the Democrats in control of The Senate, which has to advise and consent on those nominations, threatened to change the rules of the filibuster.  The filibuster is the means by which senators "block" nominations.  In essence, they threaten to talk those nominations to death if they are ever brought up for a vote, so they aren't.  The threat is called the "nuclear option."  But rather than give up the filibuster for all purposes, the Republicans agreed--it was a gentlemen's agreement mind you, nothing formal--that the filibuster would be used to block appointments only in the most dire circumstances and for the most compelling of reasons.  But on Wednesday, Senator Lyndsey Graham put blocks on three nominations, one of them the proposed new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellin, whose intended position needs filling if any position does.  Obviously, a gentlemen's agreement requires that gentlemen enter into it, and while Graham is a Republican, he is what passes for one: a moderate (by Republican standards), and I always thought somewhat bipartisan, but it appears that I was wrong.  His purported reason is that he watched a feature on 60 Minutes last Sunday in which CBS reported that witnesses had seen evidence of Al Qaeda activity in Benghazi over the course of the three months before our diplomatic mission there was overwhelmed and four members of the diplomatic corps were murdered in their compound and at the CIA annex nearby.  Mind you, the primary focus of the report was a man who appears to have been a British mercenary hired by the State Department to run the security at the facility, and another who has already testified before Darryl Issa's committee in The House, Greg Hicks.  CBS's reporter characterized these two as heroes, but Hicks at least was the object of some scornful characterizations by fellow members of the diplomatic corps when he testified.  And the British military consultant is hawking a book he has written on the subject.  CBS said he was using a pseudonym because he feared for his life, but he appeared undisguised and gave enough history about himself that anyone who wanted to discover his identity could probably do so with a few phone calls.  There was plenty of melodrama in the report, but nothing new.  The issue raised by CBS seems to have been the same one raised by the Republicans from the outset.  Intelligence officers suspected that Al Qaeda's presence in Libya was growing and that an attack on U.S. personnel and facilities was imminent, but the Obama administration seems not to have known it, and wasn't aware of it even a week after the attack.

It may be that the performance of the people in our diplomatic corps who make decisions about security levels missed something they should have known, but it was no surprise to anyone that Libya was in turmoil and that Al Qaeda was there.  And as reported during the original Issa hearings, there had been cuts in funding for the State Department, and security is one of the areas that suffered.  But as CBS reported, it isn't the case that there was no one there to defend U.S. diplomats.  The CIA had a compound about a mile from the diplomatic mission, and during the riots in Benghazi, several CIA staff members were able to fight their way over to the diplomatic compound and to bring some American staff back to the CIA compound, which was also attacked.  Still, in the final analysis, there wasn't enough of a military garrison on the premises of the diplomatic compound--what was there was composed of armed Libyans the State Department had hired and unarmed Americans led by the British consultant who starred in the report--were obviously inadequate.  All of that is on the record.  What else is there to know?

What this is really about is that the Republicans aren't doing too well in the polls.  They are looking for something that will attract public attention with which to tar the Democrats, and the executive branch in particular...Hillary Clinton if possible.  After all, she is the presumptive Democratic candidate for president in 2016, and if the Republicans are in the ill repute then that they are burdened with now, the election will be a walk over for her.  That's what this is all about, as are the hearings about the website for Obamacare.  Republican tactics never change.  They will use the filibuster, calumny, hyperbolic assertions and outright misrepresentations if they must in order to get elected, and all this smoke emerging from their numbers is not a sign of fire.  It's a sign of political pragmatism in the worst sense.  George W. Bush's foreign policy was a disaster, so they want to mar the reputation of President Obama's.  They have no plan to enhance the healthcare of the 50 million or so uninsured Americans, so they seek to discredit the Affordable Care Act, which admittedly has its problems, but come the elections in 2014, it may well be the success for the vast majority of the uninsured that President Obama hopes it will be, and they know it.  That's why they'll pick every nit they can between now and then.  It's the Republican way.  As for Graham and his blocks on nominees, I hope he keeps it up.  The best thing that could happen in American politics would be the abolition of the filibuster, and with that being threatened, it will be interesting to see whether the Republican Party takes Graham's side...or leaves him to fend for himself like those diplomats in Benghazi.

Your friend,

Mike