It's been 100 years since the Titanic sunk. History often portrays that disaster as the inevitable result of hubris and a failure to be aware of the environment in which the ship was operating. Perhaps there are lessons for today.
A year or so into his administration, President Obama compared his efforts to effect change in Washington to turning a major cruise ship while at full throttle. To those of us who had celebrated his victory, it seemed like a splash of cold water from one of the many icebergs on the horizon. What, does he mean that Washington wouldn't be totally transformed in a few years?
As we prepare to work toward his re-election, it's really important to take a closer look at some of those "icebergs." While a second Obama term might seem to imply a smoother path to change (depending on the house and the senate, of course) the barriers to real change are still with us.
The first barrier, of course, is money...in every sense.
Cost of getting to congress? In 2008, it was $1,362,239 for the House, $7,500,000 for the Senate. The result is a constant "second job" requiring solicitation of money for the next campaign. And to get it, Congressmen (mostly GOP, but not all by any means) take boilerplate legislation from organizations like ALEC and from lobbyists.
I hate reading that Obama had an "absolute majority" in 09 and 10. He had Lincoln, Nelson and the "Senator from Aetna" among others.
And for the presidency? From a dubious source:
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign shattered all records by raising $760 million in the last election cycle. That record is not likely to last much longer — Obama is expected to raise more than $1 billion for his re-election campaign. And overall spending by all candidates in 2012 is predicted to eclipse an astounding $8 billion.
Obama can't totally alienate Wall Street or the markets, no matter how much the 99% wants him to. Our sincere shoe leather just can't counter Adelson, Koch, Koch, et al.
Without control of both House and Senate, changing the rules to counter
Citizens United isn't even imaginable.
The money issue goes much farther, though. From the outsent, Obama was faced with a crashing economy. The average citizen--looking at the report from his/her retirement funds--wouldn't have taken time to consider that the entire 8 year Iraq war had been fought "off the books" and put on or Chinese credit card. You just get those reports every quarter and blame the current president. On Wall Street, speculators abound. So folks like Summers and Geitner may have seemed like necessary evils--credible enough to soothe the tetchy egos of the traders.
A more imposing iceberg, though, was the entrenched bureacracy in government agencies. Most of the work of government is done by mid-level employees (who work very hard for the most part, btw, despite the current memes.) There are about 2.65 million of them right now. (Side note: The ratio of federal employees to the general population is down from 9.1 percent in the Bush years to 8.4 % in the Obama years, despite the lies of the GOP.) These employees don't go far and don't generally want to change much. To them, administrations come and go but the way they do their daily jobs changes little. It's important to realize that when you hear headlines of major screw-ups (like the approval of a drilling plan for the Gulf that promised to save walruses.) Most of the decisions that keep the turbines churning on the cruise ship of state are greased by pretty low-level folks, and unless someone is very aggressive at checking what they do every day and every week, it's likely to get done in 2012 the same way it was done in 2008.
Many years ago, when I was reading Kos but not commenting, I read something about "sleeper cells" in government agencies. I began to pay attention when someone (like Bachmann or McDonnell) bragged about being a graduate of Liberty University. This is the Jerry Falwell school where you can get a law degree with a concentration in Leviticus! At the start, LU grads did very poorly on Bar Exams, but they've really pumped up their tutorial services. They've also increased their size exponentially!
At the start of the spring semester last month, enrollment totaled 57,371 at the Lynchburg school. The twist: 45,000 of those students are learning online.
The Bush administration made a concerted effort to get folks of this "persuasion" at the highest levels of positions in government. To make that clear, they weren't put in as appointees that would be changed when Obama came in. A law school grad (no matter how able) is going to be a GS 12 or 13, and after at least one good evaluation probably couldn't be fired unless they committed some significant crime. It's impossible to really determine how many of these fundamentalists are in the government right now but I tried to extrapolate from the growth of the DC branch of the LU alumni group, and it's certainly thousands in that city alone.
The same phenomenon could be investigated in the former Minerals Management Group (Drugs, Sex and Drill, Baby, Drill) and virtually every other government agency. 8 years of Bushies was a long time, and Rove was planning for a permanent majority.
So as you add up what has been accomplished and plan your time for October, consider the icebergs. And unless you want the Supreme Court to sink like the Titanic, be generous.