A dynamic that has been steadily nurtured by the corporate media has taken hold among the American people. The 112th Congress has been marked by the domination of the House by the Republican Party. During this time, the House has turned its back on the middle class, and brazenly protected tax cuts to the rich while demanding cuts in services benefitting the majority of Americans. Republican members of Congress have been unapologetic in their refusal to consider any tax increases that would hurt the rich, which they have described in worshipful terms as the job creators. Proposals to entirely destroy Medicare are described as "bold." Finally, when Republicans make particularly crazy proposals such as defaulting on the debt, because we will do it sooner or later, the corporate media has trained the American people to blame President Obama a Democratic President for such remarks.
The crazier a Republican sounds, the more likely the American people, particularly the left will blame the President because their craziness must be do to something he is doing, and if a Democratic President were somehow "strong," then the Republican party would actually act in a moderate manner. This is a basic assumption that has taken hold throughout the political spectrum even on DU where threads noting crazy states made by Republicans are met with replies by liberals giving the Republican a free pass, and blaming the loss of common sense on Democrats.
This corporate media narrative of Blame Democrats and Give Republicans a Free Pass hides a basic fact that is hiding in plain sight. The 112th Congress is the worst Congress ever. Nothing constructive is emerging from the Republican dominated House. Instead, Republican House members are behaving as their overwhelming majority is a mere protest movement, thus they have abandoned any pretense of governing, and have taken to passing symbolic measures designed to appeal to their base such as the Balanced Budget Amendment, which requires a 2/3 majority to increase taxes, the Cantor Medicare Voucher plan, and repealing HCR. None of these measures had any chance of passing the Senate or surviving a Presidential veto. Worse, in connection with the debt ceiling, this political posturing directly lead to the down grade of U.S. debt.
The fact of the matter is that
President Obama is dealing with the worst Congress ever. John Boehner is perhaps the worst House speaker ever, since he can't even follow through on proposals he himself makes in negotiations without being undercut by his lietenant, Eric Cantor, who has designs on being elected President or House Speaker, or the Tea Party types who believe that Fox News talking points are actually true.
Would any President be able to succeed with such a Congress? Yet, the corporate media obscures the basic fact that this Congress is the worst ever. Indeed, rather than hold John Boehner responsible for his direct role in presiding over the Worst Congress ever, the corporate media continues to focus on the President who is doing his best to govern notwithstanding the unwillingness of the House to pass even routine like raising the debt ceiling, and choosing instead to pass bills that are designed to appeal to their base, which have no chance of passage.
Worse, the American people, including liberals, have been trained to admire the tactics and chaos of the 112th Congress as leadership! Liberals complain that the President is too willing to compromise, and that he should act more like Republicans like John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell and simply issue ultimatums that the Republican party would never accept. Conversely, when the President does make demands that are unlikely to be accepted, such as his current demands to increase infrasture spending to stimulate the economy, the American people have been trained to blame the President for the 112th Congress failure to take any action on such proposals!
As a result, the Republican party, which presides over the worst Congress ever, gets a free pass. They get to ignore the employment rate with impunity safe in the knowledge that the American people, including liberals, will blame the President instead. Sure, the American people might not like Congress as a body, but they show no willingness to put pressure on their individual representatives.
Here is a great article that goes beyond the typical false equivalency that pervades the corporate media. The 112th Congress is the worst Congress ever. But, don't expect the corporate media to highlight what is hiding in plain sight. Afterall, this might cause the American people to hold Republicans accountable for actions that border upon active sabotage of the American economy and the welfare of the American people.http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/19/worst_congress_ever
In 2006, I wrote a book with the Brookings Institution's Tom Mann called The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, in which we reflected on the high level of dysfunction in Congress that had been building since the 1990s. From the Clinton years through the middle of George W. Bush's second term, partisan division had been accompanied by a growing ideological gulf in Congress, and along with it had come a decline in institutional loyalty and other norms, the near disappearance of meaningful debate and deliberation, and a sharp decline in the "regular order," the adherence to and respect for the rules and procedures that normally operated in the legislative body.
Two years later, we wrote a second edition to reflect the change that had come with the return of Democratic leadership to Congress, noting at least some marginal areas of improvement, albeit within the larger context of continued dysfunctionality. We were hopeful that Barack Obama's sweeping victory in 2008, along with the robust gains for his party in both houses of Congress -- a sharp contrast with the controversial 2000 presidential election and the razor-thin margins in Congress that followed -- might bring a return to more functional government and a proud and functioning First Branch. That did not mean a supine and kneejerk Congress bending to the will of the president, but one vigorously asserting its independent role, through oversight and other means.
Quite obviously, that didn't happen. Three years after publishing the second edition we could write a third, entitled The Far More Broken Branch. Yes, the 111th Congress, during the first two years of the Obama presidency, produced an impressive spate of major legislative accomplishments, from a stimulus package to a sweeping health-care reform bill to major financial regulatory reform. But all were passed after contentious, drawn-out, partisan battles that left most Americans less than happy with the outcomes. And look what we have now: a long-term debt disaster with viable bipartisan solutions on the table but ignored or cast aside in Congress; an impasse over the usually perfunctory matter of raising the statutory debt limit placing the United States in jeopardy of its first-ever default; sniping and guerrilla warfare over two major policy steps enacted in the last Congress, health-care reform and financial regulation; no serious action or movement on climate change, jobs, or the continuing mortgage crisis; and major trade deals stalled yet again despite bipartisan and presidential support.
So what went wrong? Republicans, having been thrashed at all levels in 2008, did not respond to the voters' rebuke by cooperating with the majority or trying to find common ground. Instead, repeating a tactic employed with great political success by Republicans in 1993 and 1994 against a newly elected President Bill Clinton, they immediately united fiercely and unremittingly against all the Obama and Democratic congressional initiatives. In the Senate they used delay tactics -- the filibuster and the hold -- in an unprecedented fashion, to block a large number of Obama administration nominees for executive branch positions and draw out debate to clog the legislative process and make an already messy business even messier. The session's legislative accomplishments occurred because Democrats maintained enough discipline -- and had large enough margins -- to enact their bills with the support of Democrats alone. The health-care bill was able to make it past a Republican filibuster in the Senate because Democrats, for a brief moment, had exactly enough senators to overcome it. Both parties acted as if they were parliamentary parties, indivisible blocs rather than groups of individual actors casting votes for reasons besides partisan loyalty. But in a non-parliamentary system, built on checks and balances and a separation of powers, parliamentary parties simply cannot work. Accomplishments get delegitimized, and some areas like climate change, end up in total gridlock.
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