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Jewish World Review
July 27, 2011
25 Tamuz, 5771
Life imitates sport
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Itt’s fourth and long in America’s fight to avoid default, but our leaders still can’t agree on the field conditions.
“The White House moved the goal post,” House Speaker John Boehner protested Friday night. “There was no change at the goal post,” White House chief of staff Bill Daley responded, via “Meet the Press” Sunday morning. Yet Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, is on record saying the uprights were indeed moved — by the Republicans. “It is like trying to kick a field goal and the goalposts keep moving,” he said earlier in the budget fights. It’s time to throw a flag and penalize both sides for unnecessary sportsmanship: specifically, turning the debt-limit impasse into an extended athletics metaphor. A week ago, President Obama said “we’re in the same playing field,” but by Monday night he was accusing Republicans of playing “a dangerous game that we’ve never played before.” A confused Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, went from saying that both sides “need to move this ball down the field” to asserting that “the ball is in their court.” Boehner countered that, wherever the goal posts are, “the ball continues to be in the president’s court.” On the Senate floor, lawmakers found debt-limit precedents in fox-hunting and gladiator fights. Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the leader of a large bloc of House conservatives, explained his support for a plan that had no chance of passage: “Every Friday night, when they get ready to play the game, there’s always one team that’s favored,” but “they still play the game, and sometimes the underdog wins.” There’s only one problem with the governing-as-football idea: This isn’t a game. If you lose the full faith and credit of the United States, you don’t shake hands at midfield and meet for a rematch later in the season. The trivialization of the debt dispute by our elected sports buffs points to a larger problem with our politics: that lawmakers have abandoned governing as they pursue a perpetual contest to gain seats in the next election. Policymaking has become just another means of campaigning, as partisans on the sidelines chant slogans and hector the opposing team and leaders keep track of wins and losses — not for the American public, but in their own game of gaining and holding majorities. A revealing example came late last week when word broke of a possible deal between Obama and Boehner. As The Post’s Paul Kane reported, Senate Democrats protested to Obama’s budget director that the president was squandering their advantage: “The Democrats were winning, the senators said.” Never mind that without a deal, millions could lose their jobs or their homes. The Democrats were winning. Reporters, who have long favored the political horserace over substance, willingly serve as the politicians’ sportscasters. A bestselling book by two political journalists is called “Game Change.” Politico’s must-read morning cribsheet is called “Playbook.” When Reid put out a debt-limit proposal, the New York Times called it “a Hail Mary pass.” When Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell presented his plan, NBC’s Chuck Todd called it a “Hail Mary punt.” Politico asked why Obama (who speaks of the importance of “skin in the game”) has been on the “sidelines” rather than being a “legislative closer.” Lawmakers are shrewd enough to disavow the gamesmanship they practice. “This isn’t a game of chicken,” Reid told Republicans. “No more games,” McConnell told Democrats. But political athletes can’t help themselves. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) complains that Republicans “did not play ball with us,” and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) lectured House Republicans on “how we are going to play ball here.” Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) likened Obama to “a relief pitcher who enters a game in the fourth inning trailing 19-0 and allows another run to score. . . . [F]ans should be far angrier with the starting pitcher.” On the other side, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) tells Democrats to “get in the game,” and McConnell instructs Obama to “get off the sidelines,” but Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) says it’s “way too late in the ballgame” for an Obama proposal. Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) warns that “Republicans are playing a lose-lose game,” while Rep. Louie Gohmert (Tex.) sees Republican legislation as a “game-changer.” Default would certainly be a game-
changer, and not a favorable one. But not to worry: On the Senate floor, Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said that, “even though the clock is ticking down,” he still expects a happy outcome. Why? Because he’s a sports fan. “I have seen miraculous comebacks in the fourth quarter of basketball games, maybe the last two minutes,” he said. I saw “Hoosiers,” too, senator. But if the debt-limit standoff ends badly, we will have lost more than a basketball game.
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Previously:
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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