Look out, America 2012:

Wolf Blitzer: Sarah Palin says. “I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we’ve taken, that … that would … bring this whole … I’m not doin’ this for naught,” and that is a direct quote from Sarah Palin. Clearly, leaving open the possibility that she would be interested in leading the Republican Party in 2012 if she and John McCain were to lose this presidential contest right now.

Sure, it’s funny, but it’s also sad in that it really illustrates the bankruptcy of both the Republican Party and of the two-party system in the United States. I am greatly troubled by the reanimated zombie version of its Gilded Age incarnation that the Republican Party has become, though even that description may be unfair to the dusty pols of that day who were merely trying to make a day’s honest graft instead of destroy basic Constitutional rights. Nor am I a fan of the invertebrate basis of the Democratic Party, which is all things to no people and sells out those same rights, most recently in the case of telecom immunity for illegal eavesdropping–something that it has only been saved from in this current election by Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric, and we’ll see if he has the will to actually deliver once he gets into office or we might as well give up hope, because there will be no one left to turn to.

For the last eight years we have suffered under what has essentially been one-party rule. Even when the Democrats recovered Congress in 2006, they lacked the cohesion to force the administration to the table even on its most flagrant abuses, as those still-outstanding subpoenas to people like Harriet Miers suggest. Assuming the kind of sweeping win for the Democrats that the polls seem to predict, we might now get at least two years of the same thing–until the midterm elections in 2010 rewrite the story. I hope the Demos press their advantage, because they have a lot of one-sided work to do to get the country back to even, back to where Bush found it when he got it, if such a thing is possible.

That said, on the whole it is a bad thing when these parties do not have to take each other into account. There is wisdom forged in compromise. Yes, we don’t always get all the things we think we should, but when you have to take the other guy’s beliefs into account you’re less likely to get extremism. Further, having a true equal as the player on the other side fosters respect between both parties to the game. There’s a useful analogy to be made with the way the early settlers treated the Native Americans before they got too secure, before the Revolution. There were plenty of squabbles and skirmishes and some outright hostility, but as long as the balance of power wasn’t wholly one-sided, there were more attempts made at getting along. Later on came the Trail of Tears and the reservations and a host of other abuses that to this day haven’t quite been rectified, if they ever could be. Yes, it’s an unsubtle comparison, but true: equality between conflict partners raises the tone, makes you play a better, more honest game.

That doesn’t mean the Congress should be split along 50-50 lines, because for now the day of compromise is over. All we’d be likely to get under such a scenario is gridlock, because ideology and partisanship have long since triumphed over pragmatism and patriotism, and it’s all about winning one for your team-teams that are as irrelevant to our daily lives as if they were bridge clubs on Mars. You could reenact Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, seal them into the Capitol and let the battle roll on, tide surging left, then right, while the rest of us, uncared for, strangle outside from privation and too much sunlight. They would never notice.

Thus, the breakdown of the Republican Party as a coherent political body is a bad thing for the country, just as the slow disintegration of the Democratic party was in the Reagan and post-Reagan era (the Clintons represent some momentary but largely ineffective restoration, like a final emperor of Rome in the West, before the barbarians decided to just be done with the whole pitiful illusion). Sarah Palin as post-McCain party leader (not that he ever led anyone) is symptomatic of that decline, a commanding figure to one fragment of the now tattered Big Tent. That she commands the respect of that one faction is not especially surprising given her beliefs and their desperation to be represented, but it’s not encouraging. Her elevation is comparable to the Republican Party of 1860, having seen John Brown spared from execution, nominating him for president over Abraham Lincoln. That she will lead her contingent further into the wilderness is perhaps a good thing, for the far right has too long exercised disproportionate power over the rest of us, but it speaks very poorly of the state of the Republican party that any real reformers they may have on their bench will have to clear her out of the way before they can get word out to the rest of us. In fact, any potential moderates within the party will be crippled by a primary fight in which they try to pander to the Palin crowd before they’re allowed to speak to the rest of us. Better to let them walk, and speak directly to the mainstream of the nation. Nixon was right about the Silent Majority, but wrong about who they are–not extreme conservatives, but ideologically agnostic moderates.

…And there’s always the chance that, having spent four years figuring out where she and McCain went wrong, Palin won’t be any better prepared, any smarter, anymore intellectually curious than she is now, but she’ll have a message better crafted to fool the more gullible among us. In which case, I fear we are doomed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 10:25 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.