Comments | grendel317: Why I Am Not Thrilled (Among Other Reasons)

grendel317

Why I Am Not Thrilled (Among Other Reasons)

Nov 05, 2008 01:00

One party now controls the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.

I think I would have rather seen the McCain / Lunatic Nutjob ticket win.

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grendel317 November 5 2008, 06:41:45 UTC

Well, that's a fair point. Controlling all three gives a party enormous power to "do stuff," and sometimes that stuff will be things I agree with. However, on average I would prefer higher barriers to government action. I would argue that many (if not all) of the worst excesses of the Bush administration were either attempts to tear down some of those barriers or a direct result of the consequent lack of checks and balances. Obviously, illegal end-runs around judicial review and the legislature are qualitatively different than simply winning all the elections, but if the end result is a party with relatively few constraints or safeguards, I can't say I'm happy about the situation either way ( ... )

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grendel317 November 5 2008, 15:50:23 UTC

Darn it, LJ just ate a great big response. Here it is again, somewhat summarized.

Regarding the CRA, it's possible that you're right - lots of things look like juggernauts of inevitability in retrospect that were actually quite tenuous at the time. However, I think the real driving forces were those decades of work you mentioned and the accompanying cultural changes. If somehow the CRA hadn't been passed up until today, I don't think it would have any trouble in the current political environment. You could argue that the cultural changes wouldn't have happened without the legal ones, but I think the causative lines run more strongly in the other direction.

(Bad ideas from the New Deal, according to John, in a separate post.)

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evil_anna November 5 2008, 14:44:10 UTC

Nothing is permanent though. The House and Senate will have an opportunity to become controlled by the Republican party in just two years.

grendel317 November 5 2008, 15:07:40 UTC

That's true. "This too shall pass" and all that. And, it's tempting to say that it would be hard for them to do worse than the last guys.

evil_anna November 5 2008, 15:13:48 UTC

You don't know yet if things will become bad enough for you to pine for time to fly. Perhaps things will be nice! And it's not this state of affairs happened by accident.

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear you are not pleased. I sincerely hope things will turn out better than you fear.

grendel317 November 5 2008, 15:42:04 UTC

Oh, but I don't think that's what the quote means! "This too shall pass" is a reminder for good times and bad! If things go well, enjoy and savor it, because it won't last forever. If things go poorly, marshal on, because better things may be still to come.

It's one of my favorite sentiments.

And yes, I'm hoping the "enjoy and savor" side will be operative for the next few years. :-)

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