Kevin Drum: Ungovernable?

[RedEarth]

John McCain has obviously decided that he can't win a straight-up fight, so he's decided instead to wage a battle of character assassination, relentless lies, and culture war armageddon. So what happens on November 5th?

If McCain wins, he'll face a Democratic congress that's beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won't even return McCain's phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It'll be four years of all-out war.

.......

Am I exaggerating? Sure. Am I exaggerating a lot? I don't think so. McCain, in his overwhelming desire for office, is unloosing forces that are likely to make the country only barely governable no matter who wins. This would be very bad juju at any time, but George Bush has so seriously weakened the country over the course of his administration that we don't have a lot of room for error left if we want to avoid losing the war on terror for good and turning America into a banana republic while we're at it. We need to start turning the ship around now.

McCain doesn't seem to care much about this anymore, but the rest of us ought to. Unfortunately, no one asked us. I'm afraid we have some rocky times ahead.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/ungovernable.html

[bemildred]

1. Well, that is a point.

There is unfinished business from the 70s still on our plate. I don't know that Clinton is a good analog to Obama, Clinton just wanted to be one of the ruling elites too. What Obama wants remains to be seen, but I doubt he just wants to settle in, and I suspect he is a better politician than Clinton ever was (He is black, yet he beat the Clinton's when they had all the cards). But we will see ...

It is worth noticing however that things often get rocky for empires when they lose their mojo. I have seen posters here express concern that we have another civil war to worry about when the depth of the failure of our ruling elites becomes clear, and the analogy of the Spanish Civil War was mentioned. Certainly what has happened to Russia is worth considering. We certainly have an angry reactionary right, and the indices of social health are second and third world level in this country, not first.