There are two ideas about America that are in vogue in Britain. First, the US is going through a political crisis that threatens the economic health of the country. And second, the Republicans are entirely to blame. The first statement is true, the second simplistic and misleading. Here is where things stand. On Wednesday, Congress voted through a last-minute agreement to reopen the federal government and avoid a debt default. This came after two weeks of shutdown, in which 800,000 federal employees were sent home without pay, war memorials were fenced off, national parks shut and at Mount Rushmore traffic cones were laid out to prevent people from taking photographs. The cost to the economy has been estimated at about $24 billion (Dh88.27 billion).
The cost to America’s global reputation could be even greater, as it has created an image of a country that cannot govern itself. The shutdown was embarrassing enough, but the wider problem is that this keeps on happening. It all started in 2010, when elections resulted in a Democrat-controlled presidency and Senate balanced by a Republican-controlled House. Since then, the House Republicans have tried repeatedly to use their control of the purse strings and the threat of default, to challenge President Obama’s policies — particularly his signature health-care reform known popularly (or otherwise) as Obamacare.
The Democrats have resisted and the result has been endless gridlock and government by brinkmanship. It is tempting to blame the Republicans for using people’s jobs and services as bargaining chips in a grand game of political poker. Certainly, the influence of the conservative Tea Party movement has significantly affected the Republican strategy. These radicals have forced the party to embrace an anti-government agenda and have made members of Congress far less willing to be seen to compromise with the Democrats, lest they be accused of heretically abandoning the tenets of ideological conservatism. The Tea Party movement’s triumph is to make the Republicans ultra-sensitive to the mood of what the Fox News polemicist Bill O’Reilly calls “the folks” — hard-pressed middle-class people with a strong faith in Jesus, a love of firearms and a terror of taxes.
Ted Cruz, the current Tea Party darling in the Senate, plays up to this archetype perfectly. Sometimes when debating, he likes to put on what he calls “my argument boots”, a pair of black ostrich-skin cowboy boots. Conservative and kinky, all at once. But to place all the guilt on the Republicans is to miss the real nature of partisanship in Washington: Everyone is infected by it, on both Left and Right. Two weeks ago, the House Republicans presented a financial strategy to the Senate that included a delay in the implementation of Obamacare. It was the Senate Democrats who refused to approve the budget — something they have now done for four and-a-half years running — prompting the shutdown. And it was Obama who then simply refused to negotiate with his opponents for the next fortnight. The president said he was willing to negotiate but not to compromise.
What kind of negotiation ends without compromise? One that is designed to end in your opponents’ total surrender — and the Republicans were understandably reluctant to engage in such a loaded conversation. While conservatives spoke pointlessly on the TV news networks about how they were willing to talk but could not find anyone to talk to, President Barack Obama hit the campaign trail and accused them of wrecking the economy before crowds of cheering, adoring, unthinking fans. If Obama is unpopular with the Right in Washington DC, then it is partly a personal thing. He is not a very nice man to those he disagrees with, nor is he above denigrating them in public. His style of politics has contributed to the partisanship just as surely as Senator Cruz and his argument boots. In other words, the crisis of the past two weeks was not caused by one party but by a dysfunctional politics.
The US constitution was designed in the 18th century to create a divided government, in the hope that this would limit the powers of the state and protect local governments and individual freedom. Occupying that constitutional framework in the 21st century are two parties defined by an ideological war over what it means to be American. The Democrats have moved Leftwards since 2000, to the point that they have produced a health care reform that is almost European in its social democratic ambition.
The Republicans, meanwhile, have settled on the anti-government Right and stubbornly refused to move from what they regard as a position of patriotic principle. Given that their stand is against a skyrocketing debt (up about $6 trillion since Obama took office), some of us look upon their struggle with considerable sympathy. Alas, the American people have not yet decided which philosophy they prefer, which is why they have elected a Democrat president but a Republican House. There will be another round of congressional elections next year, but until the country decides definitively what it wants — until either a Left-wing or a Right-wing majority emerges in the electorate — we can expect this gridlock to continue. Indeed, all that America really agreed on Wednesday was a package to reopen the government, a package that ends in January. This means that the next shutdown showdown is just 90 days away and counting. We shall return to this subject in three months’ time.
— The Telegraph Group Ltd, London, 2013
