Drool
This is the post-Sunday morning news show gripe (or maybe a stronger word relating to dogs). The long national “nightmare” of Democratic intra-Party negotiations goes on and on and on. Oh, I know it really hasn’t been that long, but today’s media wants news now; and they don’t have the patience to “watch the pot boil”. So they are trying to guess every point of contention and press every player, everyone who might be “in the room where it happens” to let slip what’s going on. They’re drooling for scraps of information, or better yet, controversy.
I get the whole drooling thing. It’s like our five dogs when I open the refrigerator door. They all know – the carrots are in there. And, because they are all “good dogs” they sit down and begin to drool. The media feels the same way, if only someone would open the door to “the room where it happens”, they will sit and drool. But they won’t, of course. They aren’t “good dogs”. They’ll smash open the door and try to get an exclusive with the one participant who is disgruntled. That’s why no one negotiates on TV, it just puts everyone in a corner they can’t get out of.
Sausage
So I do understand why the media is feeding the impatience – they hope it will make the door open quicker. But what truly annoys me are the folks who were Republicans and left because of the 45th President, or worse, still are Republicans who pretend their party isn’t fully co-opted by Trumpism. They sit there and slyly give “advice” to the Democrats on how they can resolve the issue, and, to abuse a phrase from Hamilton, “get the sausage made”.
Invariably their advice is: just go with the “bipartisan” infra-structure package, and leave all the other ideas behind. To summarize John Podhoretz, a former Reagan and GHW Bush speechwriter, Biden should give up the idea of being a “transformative President” and just take what Joe Manchin will give him. “There isn’t a national mandate for transformative change, in fact, there’s no mandate at all”. Joe Scarborough on MSNBC echoed the same sentiments on Monday morning.
And both noted that if Democrats don’t take THEIR advice and reach a deal now, with control of the Congress and the Presidency – then the Trump/Republicans will win in 2022. And Democrats will never pass legislation again.
Agony and Ecstasy
There’s a classic 1965 bio-pic titled The Agony and the Ecstasy starring Charlton Heston ( of The Ten Commandments) as the artist Michelangelo. He left his home in Florence and travelled to Rome to paint the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison of My Fair Lady). The Pope wanted the giant murals done quickly, but to Michelangelo the work couldn’t be rushed. For four years, Julius kept wandering into the Chapel, to stand beneath the scaffolding reaching to the ceiling and cry “Michelangelo, when will you make an end?” The artist would always answer “When I’m finished!”
Or the more common cry of the fifteen year old in the back seat of the car on vacation, “…are we there yet?” There are lots of snide and surly responses, but when I was driving my favorite was “…it’s only a mile, more or less”. More or less – might be a mile, might be five hundred.
More or Less
We Democrats will finish. We will arrive. We’ve almost reached an agreement, more or less. It’s not going to take four years, or even four months. And we’ll “make the sausage” with Manchin and Sinema (and Warren and Sanders). It won’t be what really anyone “wants”. Manchin and Sinema will complain that the “sausage” costs too much and taxes too much, and Sanders and Warren will complain that their six trillion dollar plan is now whittled to two and a half trillion, and the rich and corporations are still getting away with not paying their fair share. And when everyone is fully griping (or maybe that same word relating to dogs) then you’ll know – the deal is good.
President Biden may not have his Rooseveltian New Deal, or even a Johnsonian Great Society. Nope – but he’s going to get his (please say in a chirpy manner) Biden-Build-Back-Better. Like sausage it’s going to taste good, and the American people really don’t want to know what went “inside”, though the “media dogs” surely do. And for the John Podhoretz’s and Joe Scarborough’s of the world – it’s going to be better than “just” the infra-structure plan, though not what the vast majority of “progressives” would wish.
At least we Democrats better get all this done. Or else guys like Podhoretz and Scarborough will be right. And I just couldn’t stand that.
