Joe Lieberman, bipartisanship, and so on
Some (including me) have felt some dismay that Obama seems to feel that Lieberman should keep his plum committee chairmanship (and it looks as though he will) and that it’s not worthwhile to dig into the crimes of the Bush Administration and prosecute the most flagrant lawbreakers. What’s with that?
Last night I was thinking about this, and tried to get a feel for such a point of view. I gradully thought about the problems—the highly critical problems—that Obama faces, global warming a key problem among them, that (if unsolved) will totally change our planet and kill off thousands of species. There’s also the problem of the economy, and of getting the Federal government back on task and staffed with competent decisionmakers. And the problem of national healthcare, particularly in an economy in which many are losing jobs and insurance companies will do anything to avoid payouts.
As I thought about these things, some of the Washington obsession with politics as usual, and getting even, and trying to stymie the other party began to look quite small and irrelevant. It occurred to me that Obama really is trying to change the nature of the game so that crass politics as usual becomes socially unacceptable—much as scurrilous attacks in the last campaign began to lose traction as people turned against that mode of campaigning.
Social pressure is extremely powerful (for humans are a social species), and a change in point of view can lead to permanent changes in behavior. I don’t think Ted Stevens or Tom DeLay or the like will change—but they are the generation now passing into history. The millions of young voters who flocked to Obama are likely to share his values and to focus on problems and how to solve them rather than on distractions like getting even.
Just a thought. I personally would like to send quite a few in the Bush Administration to jail or into exile, but I can see another approach that in the long run might be more fruitful.
