Leading by example

Opinion

January 18, 2013

Leading by example

By Donna Brazille, Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Fri Jan 18, 2013, 08:00 AM CST

PICAYUNE — The new year has picked up where 2012 left off, with America being unnecessarily pushed, again, to the edge of a fiscal cliff. As most national politicians squabble over who should head the Defense Department and posture how much money to cut from the budget, two leaders are — as much as possible — overlooking politics and looking to get things done.

This nation is blessed to have two strong, principled leaders like President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. They understand that proposals may be partisan, but solutions generally have to be bipartisan.

When Hurricane Sandy devastated the upper East Coast, Obama and Christie worked together in good will and without rancor to expedite aid and relief. On the campaign stump, Christie had been one of Obama’s toughest critics. But when the emergency came, the campaign was put on hold. That Obama and Christie were genuinely friendly and truly gracious was obvious to all who saw them interact.

Many Republicans felt betrayed and went into tantrum mode. Christie responded on Twitter: “Today I’m touring NJ with President Obama. Yes, he’s a Democrat, and I’m a Republican. We’re also adults, and this is how adults behave.” Forced to defend himself at a press conference, Christie explained the obvious, that politicians are elected not to carry the water for their party or for lobbyists, but to serve the people. And Obama, he said, “provided help to my people at one of the worst crises that this state has ever faced. ... When somebody does a good job, they deserve credit.”

Weeks later, with the Northeast still reeling from the aftermath of Sandy and in desperate need of federal emergency funds — not just for infrastructure, but for food and shelter for thousands facing a brutal winter without either — the House Republicans went into “not my job” mode.

Speaker John Boehner realized House Republicans would reject any expenditures after the fiscal cliff deal increased revenues. He canceled a vote on $60 billion for Sandy aid. Pressured, he allowed a vote that resulted in $9 billion for now. The rest? Well, House Republicans will get back to you. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, defending Boehner, said he had prevented “a rape of the U.S. Treasury.”

Gov. Christie excoriated House Republicans. Once again, it seems, he had to remind members of his party “how adults behave.”

This brings me to an email from a thoughtful citizen who feels that my last column wasn’t balanced. In it, I said Republican leaders were responsible for the failure to reach a “grand deal” on the fiscal cliff. He felt I should have placed equal blame on Obama for not cutting spending enough.

Fact: Under President Obama, government spending is at its lowest levels since Ronald Reagan’s administration; the 1.4 percent annualized growth of Obama’s first term is considerably less than Reagan’s 8.7 percent or George H.W. Bush’s 5.4 percent. The big-spending presidents have been, ironically, the Republicans.

The reader repeated some of the more egregious and erroneous talking points of the far-right media, including the false comparison between business and government, each of which exists for a different purpose and has a different responsibility. (Business exists to generate profit; government exists to “provide for the general welfare.” Those two purposes may be in conflict.)

His email illustrates why I alternately despair and hope. I hope because of people like Gov. Christie and my email correspondent. Dialogue is still possible.

I despair because, as the media accelerates the radicalization of our politics, such dialogues may become rare. Political scientists, using objective measurements, have documented that both parties have moved toward their edges, but that for every step the Democratic party drifts to the left, the Republican party jumps three to the right.

Today’s Republican Party bears no relation to the party of Eisenhower, Reagan or even the elder Bush. The party isn’t merely divided; it’s splintered among amoral establishment leaders, radical fiscal conservatives and former Rep. Ron Paul’s anti-government libertarians.

This isn’t just a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee talking. Republican professionals like Steve Schmidt, who ran McCain’s 2008 campaign, have warned that the party must move to the moderate center or risk going out of business.

That would be a shame, because we need everybody’s voice in the dialogue.

Unfortunately, one of the parties has been captured by extremists who want the United States to default on paying for things that they themselves authorized.

Ironically, and to the exasperation of many Democrats, Obama is the moderate. Business Insider reported on a scholarly study that surveyed every vote Congress took since 1789 and compared Obama’s positions to them. It found him to be the most moderate president since World War II.

I didn’t blame Obama, because he isn’t the problem. Now, can we find the decency to just listen to each other and work together?

(Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News.)

Text Only

Opinion

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Opinion Headlines

Opinion

Search Results

Leading by example

Site Map

Contact Us