Anybody curious as to what "Emergency Powers Part 1" was? It was Iraq. Christopher Caldwell makes a great point in his latest column in Financial Times. Essentially arguing that in politics, emergency is opportunity, Caldwell compares the Stimulus package being spearheaded by the Democrats to the Iraq war championed by Former President Bush.
Whether reasonable or unreasonable, the Democrats’ spending priorities antedate the financial crisis. Pre-existing agendas in politics are easily painted as evidence of bad faith. In 2004, as the Iraq occupation ran into trouble, a flurry of books presented the Bush administration’s obsession with Saddam Hussein before 9/11 as prima facie evidence of the administration’s crookedness. Democrats were not noticeably quick to call this standard unfair.
President Obama has gone beyond the minimum requirements of bipartisanship to ensure the stimulus is transparent, once enacted. Accounts of the programmes will be posted on an easily accessible website. At his urging, Democrats stripped non-essential measures that could rile Americans needlessly, such as several hundred million dollars for family planning. And Mr Obama is popular, albeit not as popular as George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq war.
Bipartisanship offers little shelter over the long run. The stimulus will be expensive, more expensive than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined and Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader, has called it a mere "down payment". The stimulus bill, whether it succeeds or fails, could be the Democrats’ Iraq. Like Iraq, it is a long-standing partisan project that is being marketed as an ad hoc response to a national emergency. It reflects the pre-existing wishes of the party’s most powerful interest groups more than the pre-existing wishes of the country. Democrats are now liable to be judged by the standard they created when they abandoned the Bush administration over the Iraq war: you break it, you own it.
Caldwell does point out that President Obama has made an impressive effort of bipartisanship by pushing Democrats to strip out unnecessary components of the bill - such as several hundred million for family planning - and has proposed tracking the entire package online. That being said, I don't think anyone would disagree that this bill is full of Democratic priorities. So will it be the Iraq war for the Democrats? I don't think so.
The Iraq war was a bloody conflict without justification. It will have a long lasting impact on our foreign policy and our military. The stimulus package, while nothing to sneeze at, will have benchmarks and end dates installed into its infrastructure - two things lacking from the Iraq war.
But what I do think this comparison brings to the table is a critique on our current system of politicking. Not the standard critique of "too much partisanship" because that criticism usually comes from one side of the spectrum. As in, "democrats are too partisan because they want their agenda passed." As much as Obama is trying to facilitate bipartisanship, we still live in an age where agreeing with the other party is abandoning principle.
Democrats and Republicans alike need to approach this critical time in our country's future by looking to what moves our country forward. Not what moves our country to the right, or to the left; but what allows our country to progress.
The only way that America will ever progress is if compromising on an issue like welfare isn’t seen as abandoning principle. It is this stigma and the perceived repercussions that has stalled America for decades, and honestly the United States cannot afford another decade of stagnant policy and dilapidated reform
Cross-posted at The New Argument.