There is a specter haunting America: the specter of a saner, updated version of Ross Perot. He is lurking out there, ready to ride the free-floating anger and distrust of Washington.
When he enters the arena, he'll say that Washingtonians, all of them, are a bunch of failures. Over the past five years, Washington has tried to reform Social Security, immigration, health care and energy policy. All of these efforts have either failed or are close to failure.
When he comes, he'll present himself warts and all. Yes, I'm an obnoxious SOB, he'll say. But you need me. Yes, I am a blank slate, but people are so desperate that they're voting for blank slates. When he comes - this billionaire Simon Cowell, this political Bobby Knight - he will change the political landscape, at least for a time.
If I were one of those fellows advising Barack Obama, I would tell him that you can either get run over by that saner Ross Perot or you can be the saner Ross Perot. God gave you self-esteem. You might as well use it for good.
First, I would say, you need to distance yourself from the status quo. You need to detach from the Old Bull committee chairmen you foolishly affixed yourself to in your first year. You need to detach from all those deals with pharmaceutical lobbyists and earmark champions. You need to detach yourself from Washington's ping-pong match of ideological overreach - as each party interprets victory as a mandate to grab everything.
You made a good start in the State of the Union address, I would tell him. In that speech, you began to reclaim the mantle of the permanent outsider.
First, you distanced yourself from the Democratic orthodoxy. You embraced some traditional Democratic policies, but also other policies that play well with independents: a spending freeze that excluded defense, nuclear power, offshore drilling, the elimination of a capital gains tax on small business, a fiscal commission, free trade deals and earmark reform.
Second, you distanced yourself from the old debates. You sidestepped the big-government-versus-small-government question. Instead of doing the liberal-people-versus-the-powerful shtick, you emphasized targeted tax cuts, deficit reduction and community bank subsidies.
Third, you distanced yourself from Washington morality. At times the speech was like a vice principal's lecture to an unruly middle school classroom. You scolded Democrats and Republicans about excessive partisanship, pettiness and insider-dealing. You took a few steps toward recapturing your image as the last thoughtful reformer. Now you have to embrace that role with a vengeance.
If you get a deficit-reduction deal, you break through the polarized rigidities that encrust everything else. You wipe clean the special-interest barnacles that encrust the tax code. You force the country to accept common sacrifice. This is the issue that unlocks everything else.
If the setbacks of the last year haven't radicalized you about the sickness of our current political system, Mr. President, I don't know what will. Are you really content to spend the year lobbying for tiny tax credits for ineffective training programs?
He's out there - that saner Ross Perot. The country would be better off if it were you.
Permalink
Comment feed for this post
