Things That Need ‘Splanin’ [to quote Ricky Ricardo]
P. Schultz
July 30, 2012
Here are
some interesting passages from a book entitled Do Not Ask What Good We Do by Robert Draper.
This one is about the Reverend
Emanuel Cleaver, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“….the greatest emotional challenge
for E.C….involved his disappointment in the Obama administration. The CBC
chairman and his colleagues had met with the president and his chief of staff,
Bill Daley, more than once to protest the White House’s supine response to the
Republican agenda. During the H.R. 1 program-slashing debate, Cleaver told the
president, ‘Look, I was mayor of Kansas City. The community development block
grant program? Huge for me. That is how I got infrastructure projects funded….’
And yet Obama’s own budget had proposed a $300 million reduction in the block
grant program.
“Of late, Cleaver…had been
conferring with his good friend and fellow Texan Jeb Hensarling, along with
Paul Ryan and Appropriations subcommittee chairwoman Jo Ann Emerson, about a
project that would redirect federal funds in grant-making agencies to the
districts that had been most persistently impoverished. Many of these were
white districts, like Emerson’s. The three Republicans were enthusiastic about
working with Cleaver. Boehner seemed open to it as well….But when Cleaver
brought the matter up to Barack Obama, the former CBC member was less than
encouraging. Not only did Obama believe such a bill was unlikely to pass during
the 112th Congress; he also preferred that Cleaver not try to do so,
for fear that it would complicate his ongoing negotiations with the
Republicans.
“And now this eleventh hour debt ceiling
compromise. When Cleaver scanned the outline of it…,he could see that it was of
a piece with previous Obama White House capitulations. As he would say later,
‘It is hard to condemn the president for hope.’ But this plan…was sure to fail:
‘Stevie Wonder could see it coming.’ The following morning, August 1,…the
reverend wrote: ‘This deal is a sugar-coated Satan sandwich. If you lift the
bun, you will not like what you see.’” [pp. 255-56]
This next one is about Boehner and
his relationship with Obama and with members of his own party.
“At a conference in late July,
Boehner had led off by describing how his talks with Obama indicated that the
president was willing to make big concessions on spending and entitlement
reform. Raul Labrador immediately went to the mike and said, ‘I have to tell
you, I feel a whole lot better than I did thirty minutes ago. Thank you for
sharing the information with us. And I urge you to keep doing that in the
future so that we don’t have to learn about it in the newspaper.’
“After the conference, a number of
senior members thanked the frequently contrarian Idaho freshman for his show of
appreciation. But they were missing the point – which was that Boehner’s
reticence was an ongoing concern to the Tea Party mavericks like Labrador who
had come to Washington innately distrusting both its customs and the leaders
who practiced them. One monologue by Boehner had hardly quelled all suspicions.
“Around the time of Labrador’s
remarks, four of Boehner’s closest pals in the House….contacted Barry Jackson
and told the chief of staff that they needed a meeting with the speaker right
away.
“’John may not see what’s going on,
but we do,’ they told Jackson. ‘Cantor’s staff is running around telling people
that Boehner actually told Cantor to walk out of the Biden talks because
Boehner was mad that Cantor was getting all the ink. Bullshit like that.’
“’That’s what Cantor and Ryan
want,’ Jackson smirked. ‘They see a world where it’s Mitch McConnell [as Senate
majority leader], Speaker Cantor, a Republican president, and then Paul Ryan
can do whatever he wants to do. It’s not about this year. It’s about getting us
to 2012, defeating the president, and Boehner being disgraced.’ That, said the
chief of staff, was Cantor and Ryan’s ‘Young Guns’ vision of a better world.”
[pp237-238]
When I was much younger, people
called such activities “shenanigans.” I did not know then nor do I know now
exactly what this word means but I do know that our politicians engage in
“shenanigans” to the detriment of the country. I would imagine that their
behavior has something to do with their egos, with their ambition. James
Madison, in Federalist #51, labeled
this stuff “the defect of better motives,” following a policy of getting
“ambition to counteract ambition” and, thereby or allegedly advancing the
public good even absent good motives. I may be wrong but it seems to me that “the
defect of better [or good] motives” is hard to supply and that ambition does
not seem adequate to the task. As Ricky
Ricardo use to say to Lucy: “You need to do some ‘splanin!”
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