Stimulus and Support for the Presidency

Senator Lindsey Graham is being interviewed on a Fox News program as I write this. He charges that the President has “failed” and has lost an opportunity to bring the country together by going forward with a recovery bill that could only gain the support of three Republican senators. The senator’s commentary directly called into question the competence of the President to lead the country. Apparently this senator speaks for the entrenched 41 Republican senators who reject a compromise worked out in joint sessions today. Three Republicans, according to media reports, will vote with the Democratic majority to pass the compromise.

The consensus of the Congress has consistently appeared to be that an extraordinary fiscal stimulus effort by the federal government was immediately essential. Now, I understand that the bill presented to the Senate was the product of a Democratic House of Representatives relieving years of tension and contained “non-stimulative” options. Accordingly, I expected that appropriate and vigorous opposition would be raised to portions of the House bill in the Senate. But, it was also my expectation, given the unquestioned gravity of the national economic problems, that the Republican opposition would be tactical rather than strategic. In other words, though the posturing would be on strategic fundamentals, the attacks would be surgical amendments to individual provisions.

We are engaged in a fighting war on two fronts and, according to most political and economic projections, near the verge of a national or international depression. The media’s 24 hour cyclic headlining of quoted and synthesized hyperbole about the economic crisis by experts and fluttering, talking-heads has continued to shake the confidence of investors and non-investors, institutions and the institutionalized among our citizens. Whatever the validity of the conclusion, some 59 million American’s recently expressed a belief that Barack Obama, a Democrat, had the ability to lead this country through these perils; a conclusion with which I did not agree. This belief was a vote of confidence. Now, two weeks into his administration, the Cheneyesque assertions by a member of the United States Senate purposefully or ignorantly undercut that confidence and are unwarranted and irresponsible. The President’s personal efforts toward the Republican minority over this past week have been highly commendable, particularly in the shadow of President Bush’s open contempt for the then minority party. Whatever the strategic fiscal arguments might be currently, our citizens and the international community need confidence in our leadership. Statements from the United States Senate subverting confidence in our President of eighteen days, severely harms any prospect of success in recovery and the stature of the United States.

The Republican Party lost the confidence of the vast majority of Americans as evidenced in the results of the last two national elections. The leadership of a Republican President had been rejected around the world. However, as the Republican Party seeks to redefine, reassert or repeat its image, it need not and should not precipitously undercut the Presidency of the United States with attacks such as those of Sen. Graham. Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. McCain said of the bill “This is not a bi-partisan” compromise. However, it is the intransigence of the Republican minority that brings failure to the President’s attempts at a bi-partisan stimulus bill. The compromise will, apparently as I write this, become the Law of the Land. Hopefully Republicans such as Sen. Graham will, however grudgingly, express a confidence in the President for the good of the country if not their party. Like it or not our President is a Democrat.