Kathianne
08-07-2016, 07:48 AM
Some think this election will 'fix' what has been wrong; others see it as an end to the foundations of our system of governing, which means a new way of governing parameters will be found. Dangerous. While the following does a better than fair job of describing, no solutions are put forward:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/08/07/new_rules_-_or_maybe_no_rules_-_govern_todays_politics_131446.html
New Rules - or Maybe No Rules - Govern Today's Politics By David Shribman (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/david_shribman/)
August 07, 2016
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — A full century ago, the 28th president — a professor as much as a politician — counseled the man who would become the 32nd chief executive that there was a predictable tide in the nation’s politics. Woodrow Wilson shaped the perspective of the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt indelibly when he told him the country was willing to be liberal for only about a third of the time and then it always returns to its conservative moorings.
This may be the election that moves the United States off all its moorings.
For this may be the election in which the liberal/conservative axis is a minimal factor, and, what is more, several other reliable tenants of presidential politics — a broad but fragile free-trade consensus, established notions of what constitutes proper campaign comportment, even the alignments between business and other special interests and the two major parties — have lost their potency, or even their relevance.
These old rules guided the Bush family for nearly two-thirds of a century, positioning them, along with the Kennedy and Adams families, among the pre-eminent political clans in the nation. Had those rules held their power, a third Bush presidency might have been a possibility and the family’s stately home on rocky Walker’s Point here might again have been a summer White House.
“Just only a quarter-century ago there was an American president who valued dignity over publicity, compromise over purity, and decorum over winning the news cycle,” said Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George H.W. Bush. “That’s not the world we live in anymore.”
...
Every American election since 1932, with the exception of 1960, has provided a choice between a liberal candidate and a conservative opponent. This arrangement has organized our politics even when the two parties had both conservative and liberal wings. (Those outlier wings — conservatives for the Democrats and liberals for the Republicans — began to weaken in the 1960s, were threatened in the Reagan 1980s and disappeared with the new century.) No one had any doubt which candidate,
George W. Bush or Al Gore, was the conservative in 2000, nor was there any debate about the ideologies of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney a dozen years later.
Not so this time. On several issues, particularly involving the candidate’s relationship with Wall Street, Mr. Trump may be to the left of Hillary Clinton. That is what prompted Thomas Frank, a committed liberal, to write, “The Republican Party wants my liberal vote” in the The Guardian last month. Mr. Frank, known for “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” his 2004 critique of conservatism, was startled this summer to find congenial views inside the Trump policy portfolio.
...
Big shifts in the profile of the two parties are underway. No one would be surprised if leading establishment Republicans acknowledge they will vote for Ms. Clinton, a prospect brightened by last week’s controversy involving Mr. Trump and the Khan family. Many blue-collar workers no longer believe their natural home is as part of a Democratic coalition that also includes minorities, professional women and university-affiliated liberals; Mr. Trump’s lead over Ms. Clinton among white working-class voters is far bigger than the margin former Mr. Romney had versus Mr. Obama.
No wonder the nation is bewildered. Our politics has become an inedible upside-down cake.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/08/07/new_rules_-_or_maybe_no_rules_-_govern_todays_politics_131446.html
New Rules - or Maybe No Rules - Govern Today's Politics By David Shribman (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/david_shribman/)
August 07, 2016
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — A full century ago, the 28th president — a professor as much as a politician — counseled the man who would become the 32nd chief executive that there was a predictable tide in the nation’s politics. Woodrow Wilson shaped the perspective of the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt indelibly when he told him the country was willing to be liberal for only about a third of the time and then it always returns to its conservative moorings.
This may be the election that moves the United States off all its moorings.
For this may be the election in which the liberal/conservative axis is a minimal factor, and, what is more, several other reliable tenants of presidential politics — a broad but fragile free-trade consensus, established notions of what constitutes proper campaign comportment, even the alignments between business and other special interests and the two major parties — have lost their potency, or even their relevance.
These old rules guided the Bush family for nearly two-thirds of a century, positioning them, along with the Kennedy and Adams families, among the pre-eminent political clans in the nation. Had those rules held their power, a third Bush presidency might have been a possibility and the family’s stately home on rocky Walker’s Point here might again have been a summer White House.
“Just only a quarter-century ago there was an American president who valued dignity over publicity, compromise over purity, and decorum over winning the news cycle,” said Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George H.W. Bush. “That’s not the world we live in anymore.”
...
Every American election since 1932, with the exception of 1960, has provided a choice between a liberal candidate and a conservative opponent. This arrangement has organized our politics even when the two parties had both conservative and liberal wings. (Those outlier wings — conservatives for the Democrats and liberals for the Republicans — began to weaken in the 1960s, were threatened in the Reagan 1980s and disappeared with the new century.) No one had any doubt which candidate,
George W. Bush or Al Gore, was the conservative in 2000, nor was there any debate about the ideologies of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney a dozen years later.
Not so this time. On several issues, particularly involving the candidate’s relationship with Wall Street, Mr. Trump may be to the left of Hillary Clinton. That is what prompted Thomas Frank, a committed liberal, to write, “The Republican Party wants my liberal vote” in the The Guardian last month. Mr. Frank, known for “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” his 2004 critique of conservatism, was startled this summer to find congenial views inside the Trump policy portfolio.
...
Big shifts in the profile of the two parties are underway. No one would be surprised if leading establishment Republicans acknowledge they will vote for Ms. Clinton, a prospect brightened by last week’s controversy involving Mr. Trump and the Khan family. Many blue-collar workers no longer believe their natural home is as part of a Democratic coalition that also includes minorities, professional women and university-affiliated liberals; Mr. Trump’s lead over Ms. Clinton among white working-class voters is far bigger than the margin former Mr. Romney had versus Mr. Obama.
No wonder the nation is bewildered. Our politics has become an inedible upside-down cake.