The tag line on my blog says, “At the juncture of journalism and daily life in Kansas City.”
Today, though, I’m going to reach a little higher and take a look at our national situation, as viewed through the eyes of incisive New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman.
Friedman has been like a laser in his last two columns — last Wednesday and Sunday. In those pieces, he painted a bleak picture of where we are as a nation and offered no light at the end of the tunnel.
Friedman
In Wednesday’s column, Friedman’s theme was that next year’s presidential election — given the Republican field and the Obama incumbency — would be a battle between the Democratic left and the Republican right.
That was assured, he said, after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie decided not to run.
A race between polarized candidates, Friedman said, is a huge loss to the country because Christie, a moderate Republican, would have pushed Obama closer to the center.
With Christie, Friedman said, “we would have had a race between the Democratic center, independents and the Republican center. Then the whole country would win. Because whoever captured the presidency would have a mandate to actually implement some version of the Grand Bargain needed to get growth going again — and growth is the only sustainable cure for unemployment, the deficit and inequality.”
The Grand Bargain that Friedman referred to is the deal that Obama and House Speaker John Boehner toyed with briefly before right-wing Congressmen jerked Boehner’s chain and said there would be no such deal because it involved some tax increases, along with huge budgetary cuts.
At the same time, Friedman said, Obama made “a huge mistake” by reverting to a narrow, tax-the-rich approach and failing to try to convince the public that a Grand Bargain was the best way to spur job growth, trim entitlements and put the nation back on sound footing for the long term.
Emboldened by his reasoning in Wednesday’s column, Friedman wrote about the missed opportunity again on Sunday. Pegging his ideas to the passing of Steve Jobs, Friedman said:
“We cannot bail or tax-cut our way to prosperity. We can only, as Jobs understood, invent our way there. That is why America needs to be for the world in the 21st century what Cape Canaveral was to America in the 1960s: the place were everyone everywhere should want to come to start up and make something — something that makes people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, entertained, educated or secure.”
Friedman juxtaposed the national curiosity and enthusiasm of the 60s with our nation’s current stagnant state.
“What is John Boehner’s vision?” he asked rhetorically. “I laugh just thinking about the question. What is President Obama’s vision? I cry just thinking about the question. The Republican Party has been taken over by an antitax cult, and Obama just seems lost.”
So, Friedman concluded, the public also has lost and is lost.
“Sometimes the news is in the noise,” Friedman wrote, “like the Wall Street protests or the Tea Party. But sometimes the news is also in the silence. To me, the biggest protest in the country today is that when the Tea Party insanely blocked any G.O.P. participation in a Grand Bargain that involved taxes, most Americans were silent.
“Why? Because they didn’t think Obama was offering a big plan from his side, either — one that rose to the true scale of our problems and aspirations, one that would push us out of our comfort zone and make us great.”
It’s enough to make you wring your hands and hang your head and cry, isn’t it?
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I would argue that one of the main factors in creating the polarization was and is the establishment media’s abandonment of its role as an honest broker in the marketplace of ideas. Instead it became a lapdog of the left (see today’s Star editorial embracing the loons of the Occupy movement) creating a void in the center. Americans wanting to gain a balanced view turned of necessity to the Limbaughs and other voices on the right.
From my own experience, I became so appalled at the election coverage of Bill Clinton’s first run at the White House in the early 90s that I turned off the network newscasts and have never watched one since. Instead I found the issues I was interested in being discussed on the Limbaugh show and, indeed, found that even the liberal positions were being more articulately expressed on his show owing to his policy of moving them to the front of the line than they were on the nightly network propagandacasts.
Today we watch Fox and MSNBC, read Huffington Post and Real Clear Politics, Salon, the Blaze, etc, a marketplace of ideas almost devoid of honest brokers looking for the middle ground and then we wonder why the country is so polarized.
The next election will be very simple: Do you want more or less government involvement in your life?
In my estimation, the delivery of services the government is involved in are some of the most inefficient and ineffective delivery systems since the smoke signal. Justice, education, health care vis a vis Medicare+Medicaid+Obamacare. Christ, it’s been ages since we actually won a war by making the other guy scream UNCLE SAM.
Government has become a fat and bloated bureaucracy that shows no signs of losing heft and becoming more entrepreneurial (like Steve Jobs). Shoot me if I’m wrong, but I doubt the mess we have created was ever intended by the Founding Fathers.
Somewhere in the Middle of the Tea Party and Occupy movements the truth is waiting discovery. I’m so far out on the right wing I make Ronnie Regan look like a Fascist, but even I can see the point that Occupy is trying to make, even if they can’t, and it’s a valid one.
In closing I will offer one suggestion that, if implemented, will have an immediate impact on our economy and spur job growth.
Make, THAT’S RIGHT, MAKE the mortgage industry reset the ratio of interest to principal payments on all mortgages so that home ownership occurs in 15 years and not 30. Payments basically remain the same and the bankers who have fleeced us since Day 1 have to shed some revenue. There are already some companies that market this type of mortgage. Unfortunately most people won’t meet the current qualifications of 20% equity given the hit real estate has taken.
The concept of paying $300K over 30 years to own a $100K house is about as un-American as anything I can think of. That is beyond the notion of capitalism and into the realm of GREED.
You don’t need to be Steven Hawking to see the kick in the pants that would provide. It’s simple, easy to understand and easy to implement with a bully pulpit or, if necessary, legislation.
Smartman, what are you doing out there on the right wing of the airplane? I thought 99 percent of funny people were Democrats because they have time to come up with jokes instead of spending time figuring out more devious, diabolical ways to screw the poor.
And, Smartman, I’m not a math whiz, but I don’t think your payments will be “basically the same” if you have a 15-year loan on $100,000 instead of a 30-year loan. There is merit, though, to getting a shorter-term loan, if you can hack the payments. We just refinanced from 30 to 18 years at about half a point lower than what we had. Indeed, our payments are about the same as they were.
Whom do you like best among the Republican candidates? Why? (Remember I was, and still am, a reporter, so everyone is a candidate to be interviewed.)
Political polarization, did indeed, as Mr. Altevogt states, begin when the MSM “abandonded its role as an honest broker in the marketplace of ideas.” Force fed social engineering, “Great Society” initiatves by our politicians and the 4th estate, Americans fell into their winter of disscontent, aleviated by the rise of the Rush and the Right. It was cathartic and I was an early enlistee.
Mr. Limbaugh’s subsequent rise to prominence, I think, must have shocked him as much as it did the Liberals he continues to pillory and the conservatives who touch his robe and seek benediction for their own political aspirations to this day. His relentless grip on the hearts and minds of so many Americans, is a testament to hard work, great timing, a lack of concern for bona fides and short memories.
While many of his ideas are spot on, the messenger should frequently be killed. Dodging the draft because of anal warts, and beating a 250K Schedule One Oxy buy, while calling for war and the incarceration of “Hippy Lettuce” smokers, is disingenuous, dissimulation at best.
No mea culpas from this mench, just chutzpah and hyperbolic hypocrisy.
I am enlisting again (Please don’t let it be like ’69.).
I wanna Occupy.
Smartman is right as usual, “Somewhere in the Middle of the Tea Party and Occupy movements the truth is waiting discovery.”
These “Occupy” kids are easy to make fun of. Ill spoken, nebulous ideas, no certain end game and worst of all, now co opted by various and sundry unions, (The New York Teacher’s Union is the worst kind of ally kids.) Machiavellian community “Leaders” and politicians whose corrupting presence screams for garlic and wolfsbane.
This “Occupy” movement, is, American discontent, at every level, across the entire spectrum of the, dare I say it, proletariat.
No longer are we ok with our seats behind the fourth wall, and fuck the fourth estate. Rush, Fox, Kieth, CNN are liars and charlatans.
This may be the winter of American discontent, and, whats wrong with that?
Me, I really do believe, as does Mort Zuckerman, Mike Lewis and dozens of other knowledgable (IMO) authors and citizens, that Wall Street is a corrupt economic charnel house, where the remains of our hope, blood, treasure and honor have died.
They are insider trading thieves who will step over your mother and already stepped over her 401K in inveterate pursuit of Jay Gould like profits at any cost, the least of which their dignity and our future.
The “Occupy” movement, is, I hope sine qua non for the increasing participation of more and more Americans in what is one of our few remaining traditions, protest by way of our First Amendment.
Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago 7 were nuts, but that war, really was bad.
Big Bill Haywood and Eugene V Debs were often bad people, but reform was needed.
The polarization, written about by Mr. Friendman, and commented on John and Smartman, will only be worked out, through a general concensus and agreement, that modifications need to be made. Advent groups like “Occupy”, I hope, will at some point, get us all to communicating with each other on a more civil basis.
Hey, I can dream can’t I?
With Altevogt, Smartman and Chuck having weighed in with sometimes-voluminous dissertations (thanks for your relative brevity, John), I think the only voice I would trust at this point is that of the Mystic of the Mountains, the Prince of Paonia, the one and only Hubartos vanDrehl. VanDrehl, where art thou? Please come forward and give us your insight so as to pierce and disperse this cloud of confusion.
Though I’ve never met Altevogt or smartman, I’m guessing they’re a couple older than middle aged delusional, angry white guys. (For the record, I am a 54-year-old white guy).
I read Chuck’s lengthy post three times and still can’t figure out his point.
The I hate the “libral media” whine is cheap, stale and simply crap. Limbaugh a balanced view? Laughable.
Welcome to the Comments Dept., Silver Fox.
Fitz: I choose not to like any of the Republican candidates at this point. Right now the whole thing is a circle jerk. They all lack any sort of jump-off-the-bridge-with-me-personality. Not one of them is very articulate. Too much um, uh, you know, at the end of the day, humina-humina-humina. Painful to listen to, just like our current President when he’s off-prompter.
When the rest of the world determines who the nominee will be, that’s when I’ll start writing checks. I gave up on Obama right after “so help me God.” But, it coulda’ been worse. Can you imagine the nuclear train wreck that McCain and Palin would have been? Sometimes it’s best to sit one out.
As for the mortgage issue, depending on the formula behind the loan that determines how much of the payment goes to interest versus principal, you can arrive at a variety of payments and time schedules. Hell, just consider what would happen if the mortgage industry reversed the current process. What goes to interest goes to principal and vice versa. In my head I’m coming up with about 17 years. Thirty years to pay off a house is nothing but the kind of GREED that the OCCUPY movement is talking about. If they’d put together some Ross Perot flip charts and illustrate that so the average American could understand and comprehend, they’d probably start getting some support.
Hey, Silver Fox. It was a bunch of middle-aged, angry white guys like Chuck and I that kicked off this experiment that we call The United States of America. Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.
Thanks for the explanation, Smartman; that’s probably a pretty good position — sit tight and see what happens on the Republican side. (Of course, that’s about all anybody can do, anyway.)
But listen, that’s an awfully rough welcome you gave Silver Fox. Go easy, at least until he’s had his feet in the water for a while.
(I’m still holding hands with Obama, but I’m taking in a lot of water and wondering if we’ll ever break the surface again.)
Yes smartman, and a despicable portion of that experiment was wiping out the native American population and forcing millions of Africans into slavery. You can lead but I aint following.
My Dear Mr. Says,
I gave up on American politics in “68” when, after numerous assassinations, riots, burnings, marches, impassioned speeches and international warfare, all we were able to come up with were Richard Milhouse Nixon and Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I haven’t listened to a complete political speech or given a rat-fucking screw for either political party since then.
Any number of countries have governing bodies that can hold a no-confidence vote on whoever is supposed to be running the show, vote for a change of government, have a new election in three months and go on about their business.
We don’t have a government anymore, we just have one four year election after another, costing billions and making any kind of governance impossible. THAT is why the country is polarized, angry at THOSE PEOPLE (fill in the blank) and blaming everyone else for their own stupidities. Was it Pogo who said,” We have met the enemy and the enemy is us?”. If not, fill in the blank. We get the government we deserve because of television. We, collectively, are essentially illiterate because of television and have the moral values and judgement of sewer rats because of television. If a culture avidly eats the excrement like TV has squeezed off for sixty years, it becomes excrement.
We’re all God’s children. We’re all doing the best we can. But, as a nation, we have the collective intelligence, attention span, and a workable knowledge of history and geography of a bunch of end-of-the-season fruit flies.
You can blame anyone you want to. Blame me. See if I give a crappy-doodle.
OK, Fitzie, has the Western Slope of Colorado properly weighed in on these most salient features of current affairs? The weather is beautiful, the aspens a screaming yellow and I’ll not have people in suits interrupt my life with their drivel, so I have better things to do for the next twelve months than listen to lies and ravings of people who aspire to tell me what to do and how to live. We have a system that is incapable of electing leadership other than those deviously smiling, over-achieving assholes I hated in high school. Every time any one of these dickheads goes to jail or gets caught E-mailing pics of their genitalia, an angel sings.
I Remain,
Too Smart To Vote For Those Dumber Than Me,
Hubartos vanDrehl
silver fox
“I read Chuck’s lengthy post three times and still can’t figure out his point. ”
I don’t see things clearing up for you anytime soon. Stick to sports and check out the pictures in the new INK section of the KC Star.
But, I am gonna try and help ya out here concerning the “Polarization” premise of the article and comments.
This winter when it snows in January, we will all be “Polarized” in KC.
See ya in the Funny Papers.