Pride in the Lies

How does one start to discuss the absurdity and hypocrisy of the 2012 Presidential campaign? Does one begin by detailing the outright distortions – actually lies – that are being bandied about? Does one seek the high road in assailing the transgressions of the candidates? Or does one simply jump into the fray, taking off the gloves and dropping all pretense of neutrality? Deciding which to do in this campaign season is difficult because one cannot be honest without stating the unadulterated truth, without seeming to take sides in a partisan manner.

Campaigns are always filled with innuendo, half-truths, political spin, and hollow promises. What one candidate sees as a strong plan to move America forward, the opposition sees as a plan to move the nation backward. Such arguments are legitimate because one person's great idea is another person's folly. It is part of our political process that we debate such things, that each candidate presents his wares in the marketplace of ideas, and the shoppers choose what they see as the best, the most worthwhile product.

That has not occurred so far in this election cycle. This presidential election has taken lying to a new low, has created an environment where there is a strong aversion to facts, has resulted in the greatest secrecy in the history of modern elections. And so much of it lies with the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.

Never before has a campaign shown such a disdain for truth. Never before has a campaign so openly lied to the public. Never before has a campaign so brazenly admitted that it is lying. Never before has a campaign hid from voters details of what its candidate believes for fear that knowledge of those ideas will result in his not being elected.

But Romney has done each. He has resorted to the age-old GOP ploy of turning a campaign that should be about ideas into one couched in racism and resentment. Worse than his actually doing those things is the inability of too many people to see the danger in his lies, to see the deceitfulness in his secrecy, to see the recklessness in his disregard.

A look at the ads offered by the Romney campaign is a good starting point in discussing the deceit and the manner in which it has gone without enough challenge. Early in the campaign Team Romney took a quote from then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama about how the economy would play in the 2008 campaign and presented it as if President Barack Obama had recently uttered those words. The edited quote was a response to Sen. John McCain and the Republicans. When challenged about the obvious inaccuracies in the ad, a Romney campaign advisor said:

“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”

Indeed, ads are about persuading people, convincing them that they must buy what they may not need nor want. Yet, there needs to be some truth in them, a sense that there is a foundation on which to build. Not for Team Romney. Outright lying is all within the framework of its idea of fair play.

The misuse of President Obama's quote was not an isolated incident. Recently, Team Romney took a portion of a presidential speech, edited it out of context, and argued that Obama is against small businesses. That the quote reflects an idea – no one is successful without help from somewhere or someone else – also expressed by Romney during the XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 was unimportant to Team Romney.

The same can be said of the effort to paint Obama as the "food stamp" or welfare president – code for Obama wants to take the hard-earned money of white America and give it to all those lazy black and Latino people sitting at home on welfare. Instead of honestly debating whether it is right to give states more flexibility in moving people from welfare to work, Team Romney seeks to paint a picture of Obama as simply wanting to send government checks to people unwilling to work. If one listened only to the Romney campaign one would not realize that Romney sought such a waiver while he was governor of Massachusetts or that two Republican governors sought those waivers from the Obama Administration.

The lies and deceit do not stop there.

In a speech in Colorado Thursday, President Obama said:

“I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.”

Republican sycophants quickly proclaimed that Obama said he wants to create an auto-bailout like policy for other industries.

As if that is not enough, the Democrats and Republicans agreed to cut defense and domestic spending by $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the debt ceiling deal. Team Romney and the Republicans now call those President Obama’s defense cuts.

Romney also refuses to detail how he will cut taxes by 20 percent in a supposedly revenue neutral plan. He says only that he will make changes to the tax code by eliminating deductions. Will those deductions be on capital gains? Mortgage interest deductions on second homes? Multi-million dollar tax right offs for owners of NASCAR tracks? Or will those deductions be the ones that middle- and working-class Americans depend on: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Tuition Tax Credit?

We do not know because Mitt Romney won't say. We could probably bet that most of those deductions he plans to eliminate will not include the areas from which he benefits. Of course we can’t tell for sure since he refuses to release more than two years of his federal tax returns.

The Battle for America's Soul

It is a burgeoning protest, one spurred by anger that seems to keep growing. And like any action borne of anger, it has the potential to wreak havoc on society, to become a volatile mix of arrogance and self-righteousness. That is why we cannot dismiss nor ignore the frustrations emanating from the “Occupy Wall Street” encampment in Lower Manhattan or the other demonstrations sprouting up around this country. For those demonstrations are battles in the war over the heart and soul of this country, the possible beginning of an American Autumn.

Some time ago, I wrote about the growing disconnect that is occurring in this country, the manner in which our political leaders – and many of us – have lost sight of what America is and what America should be. Too often, the policy decisions coming out of Washington have divided this country: One seemingly for the rich, another seemingly for the rest of us. The result has been a palatable discontent with a world that views any shift from the conservative orthodoxy as treasonous.

That discontent was not borne with the Tea Party, though the Republicans and the Tea Party gave face to it during midterm elections in which the GOP seized the U.S. House of Representatives and several state legislatures across the country. Instead, it was borne from a crumbling economy in which the working- and middle-classes saw their modest wealth slip away, and the people who robbed America of its stability rewarded with bailouts, some of which were used to pay exorbitant bonuses.

Now, as we head into a new election season we have witnessed what anger can do to a nation, especially when that anger is accompanied by demagoguery and stridency. Washington – and some state legislatures – has been paralyzed, unable to do the people’s work, unwilling to help the millions devastated by the greed and recklessness that dominated the last decade. Jobs are needed in this country, yet Washington cannot pass a jobs bill. The infrastructure needs repairing, yet Washington wants to cut such spending.

“Occupy Wall Street” can – and should – be the pushback against the flag draped conservatism that tears at the heart of our nation and threatens to destroy its soul.

A cursory glance at “Occupy Wall Street” shows the disenchanted, the disillusioned, the disaffected, people Republicans have assailed as jealous of the wealthy, as soldiers to class warfare. But if we look beneath the surface we see a cross-section of society: students and teachers; parents and children; the employed and unemployed; the elderly and young; homeowners and renters; artists and business people; citizens and foreigners. All are of different races and political attitudes.

Just a few months ago, many may have been apathetic. They no longer are because the issues we face are not Democratic, Republican, black, white, Asian, or Hispanic. They are man-made ills that plague all of us. That is why this is a fight for the soul of America, a battle to determine if we will be a callous, vengeful, and barbarous nation, or if we will be a caring, forgiving, and civilized nation. Xenophobia and brutish ignorance have made us a suspicious people who no longer strive for what is the best in us.

Three years ago, we seemed to be reaching for all that is good. In 2008, many young people – some once apathetic toward the political system – voted for Barack Obama. Those young men and women became engaged in the life of our country after spending part of their lives decrying the corruptness of the political system, refusing to vote or even read about Washington for fear it might taint. A year ago, the Tea Party forced some of the most absurd amateurs into our lives and into the national arena.

We have come to understand what happens when we allow extremists to take our country from us. Now, we must decide – each in our own way – how we will regain control of our collective destiny, to reassert our belief that America is more than platitudes about exceptionalism. That is what some of the people are doing at “Occupy Wall Street,” seeking to force America to be America again, pushing her to open her arms and heart to her children.

That’s why we must support them, and why we must help them to understand that protesting Wall Street is not the end. It is only the beginning. Wall Street is not the sole problem that we face. Draconian immigration laws in such states as Alabama and Arizona are forcing immigrants to cower in fear of being detained, regardless of whether they are here legally or illegally. Farmers who once brought Mexican laborers in to harvest crops under the country's H-2A farm visa program are discovering that farm jobs being held for Americans are going unfilled because many of the unemployed find the work to back breaking.

The New York Times recently reported that John Harold, a 72-year-old farmer in Olathe, Colo., decided to hire fewer Mexican workers this year in an effort to save jobs for unemployed Americans in his community. "It didn't take me six hours to realize I'd made a heck of a mistake," Harold said, explaining that many of the local workers started the $10.50 an hour jobs at 6 a.m. and quit by noon.

Another farmer, 49-year-old Kerry Mattics, had the same experience. "It's not an easy job," Mattics said. "It's outside, so if it's wet, you're wet, and if it's hot, you're hot...They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much. I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks."

There are even more without jobs, and they are occupying Wall Street to show their displeasure. One such person is Jon Reiner, a former marketing executive and father of two boys. Reiner says he has been laid off three times in five years. He also says he has sent out 2,000 resumes, according to MSNBC.

“You were a member of the middle class, you were at a point in your life where you thought you’d be at the zenith of your career or upward trajectory, and all of a sudden you find yourself marginalized,” the 49-year-old said. “The term that I’ve begun to use is unemployable.

“What this rally – this organization you know – represents is to try to give voice to the have nots, who are a huge part of this society, and who no longer have the means or the opportunity to contribute,” he added.

Indeed, the protests that began with a few on Wall Street has to be carried to the ballot box, where both major parties and independents should have to vie for votes through policies that help the majority of Americans, not policies that seek revenge or to divide. “Occupy Wall Street” is an early salvo in a long war, one that with discipline, patience, and honor can accomplish as much – if not more – as the Arab Spring.

The time is ripe for us to harvest an American Autumn.

Setting the Tone for a Presidential Narrative

After more than half a year of pugnacious Republicans bellowing about what they will not accept, it was refreshing to hear President Barack Obama go on the offensive in his speech before a joint session of Congress Thursday night. Now we have to see if he will maintain his assertiveness.

The President’s speech outlining the American Jobs Act contained the passion and no, nonsense tone that was missing from the White House and the Democrat Party. For too long, the GOP and its “tear down the government” minions were allowed to dictate the narrative coming out of Washington. In doing so, they created a false debt crisis that wasted precious time that could have and should have been spent on improving the American economy. And during that time, Obama and his party seemed content to allow the petulant children run amok through our nation’s Capitol.

But Thursday night the President stood firm, outlining a jobs package that should help to ease some of the pain cutting across our nation. Of course, the proposed jobs act will not solve all of our ills. Anyone who believes that it will is delusional. It can, however, be a driving force in restoring confidence in our national economy. Because of the dysfunction that is being passed off as political discourse, too many business leaders and consumers doubt our ability to throw off this economic malaise.

It does not matter that businesses are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash; taxes for corporations are at an all-time low with some companies paying little or no taxes; interest rates are well below anything we might have expected; the stock market, though volatile at times, is strong; and profits are high at many companies. There remains a disbelief about how we govern ourselves, and whether we will work together to move this nation forward.

That is why it was important for the President to speak to the heart of America, and it is even more important for Obama and the adults in Washington to be steadfast in seeking solutions to our nation's woes.

“No single individual built America on their own,” Obama said. “We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another.”

While that declaration was a reminder of what it means to be an American, Obama's speech was an important call to action, an admonition that the problems we face are man-made, and, therefore, can and must be fixed by man.

The United States has been at its strongest when government, academia, labor, and business have worked together. The four did not have to always agree, nor did they have to be warm and fuzzy with each other. They just needed to respect what each brought to the table. When they did America emerged as a superpower, an exceptional example of not only what can be, but what should be. It is through that paradigm that America will again emerge strong.

If we rebuild the infrastructure we will create jobs that will provide people with disposable income, as well as upgrade the transportation system. If we invest in updating the electrical grid we not only create a better energy network, but we increase the potential for even more jobs. If we invest in research we can provide an environment that encourages new industry. If we revamp the business and personal tax codes, as well as set reasonable regulations on energy and the environment, we can give businesses the confidence that actions taken now will not be reversed after the fact. And if we increase the amount of money spent in the short-term, we can create the demand that leads to long-term development and job growth in the private sector.

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union, founder of the Republican Party,” the President told us Thursday night. “But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad, launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges.”

Indeed, it is that kind of vision that we need now, not the myopic view of the world that permeates our national debates. We have allowed our eyes to become jaundiced, and in doing so we can no longer see what makes America great. It is not proclamations made by self-described patriots or damnations issued by political provocateurs. It is the willingness and the ability of Americans to come together to build, to fight for what is right, to put the nation above ourselves, to recognize that ideology, while a subtext in our story, is not the story.

“Ask yourselves – where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports?” Obama asked Congress. “What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?

“How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip?” he continued. “What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result?”

The answers to those questions may be too terrifying to ponder.

Obama's "Backdoor War" Nears Success

The news came as a surprise, and as a welcomed relief: Rebel forces had made their way into Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power appeared to be dissolving with astonishing speed.

Indeed, after six months of war in which rebels, who began as peaceful protesters, took up arms against one of the world's most tyrannical leaders, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that the news reached us. One never knows what the man who President Ronald Reagan called a "mad dog" will do. Even as rebels claim to control 95 percent of Tripoli and two of Quaddafi's sons are reported to be in rebel custody, there remains a realistic fear that Quaddafi and his supporters could begin attacking civilians.

As of Monday morning, tank battalions and snipers loyal to Quaddafi were taking a last stand against rebel forces near Quaddafi’s fortified compound, according to International news reports. Quaddafi, who had been urging civilians to take up arms against the rebel “rats,” was nowhere to be found. He did broadcast a statement saying he was in the city and would be “with you until the end.”

The rebels and those civilians seemed to feel that that end was near. "Gadhafi is finished. Now we are free," one rebel, named Abdullah, told a Reuters reporter over the sound of gunfire and shelling, as his group consolidated its position to the west of the city center.

The 69-year-old Quaddafi has been a cancer on the world for more than four decades, sponsoring terrorism at home and abroad. After the Arab Spring led to the ouster of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, the resistance mounted in Libya was a welcome sign. Yet, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the protests for freedom and human dignity in Libya turned bloody with Quaddafi slaughtering his own people to maintain control.

The uprising, led by dissidents in the east of Libya, was indeed wrought with problems. More important, though, it was peopled by those who had the most to gain -- and loose -- from Quaddafi's ouster.

"This is a dream come true, something we have all been waiting for," a 19-year-old Libyan woman told CNN Sunday night. "I can talk on the phone without being scared someone is coming to get me."

Indeed fear permeated Libya, where finding the truth was difficult to say the least. Libya is a country that lacks the national institutions that can grow without a cult figure. Now, its people, like those in other Arab and North African nations in this year of change, must learn to depend on themselves and not some seemingly omnipotent leader.

According to The New York Times, the rebel leadership group, the National Transitional Council, issued a mass text message saying: “We congratulate the Libyan people for the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and call on the Libyan people to go into the street to protect the public property. Long live free Libya.”

As is customary with him, President Barack Obama, said in a controlled statement Sunday night that Qaddafi and his inner circle had “to recognize that their rule has come to an end.” He also called on Qaddafi “to relinquish power once and for all,” and he urged the National Transitional Council to avoid civilian casualties and protect state institutions as it took control of the country.

“Tonight, the momentum against the Qaddafi regime has reached a tipping point,” the President said. “Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant. The Qaddafi regime is showing signs of collapsing. The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator.”

Now that the people of Libya have shown their mettle, the United States must now show its support so that it can help the rebels win the peace. Lest we forget, it was Obama who pushed NATO to oversee bombing raids in support of the rebels, a move that led Republicans to attack the President for his "backdoor war."

The people of Libya feel that they have gained "the freedom that we all deserve," one young woman told CNN Sunday night. "I think we have proved that we are smarter than him (Quaddafi) at the end of the day."

"We are now different people," the young woman added. "And it's not even the end yet."

That's why America and NATO have to take the next step and help Libya become the nation that it can be.

The Pandemic of Foot-in-Mouth Disease

Politicians have always been susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease, but we appear to have reached a pandemic since Barack Obama became President. Nearly every day, some Republican, or one of the party’s erstwhile supporters, comes down with the disease. Instead of seeking treatment for the affliction, each compounds it by claiming that the illness was misdiagnosed by others.

For example, Mark Halperin was infected on national television, making a scatological reference to the President. He later offered an unctuous apology. In Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the disease manifested itself when he proclaimed:

“Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”

When told that only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work involves abortions, Kyl proclaimed that his statement was not meant to be taken as fact.

Halperin and Kyl are not the only ones. There have been countless other instances in which Republicans have either used racially charged language only to claim it wasn’t meant to be racial, or have made blatantly false statements only to claim the statements were not meant to be taken as facts. The most recent example of this is Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative Colorado Republican. Last Friday, Lamborn went on the radio and proclaimed that working with President Obama would be “like touching tar baby.”

“I don’t even want to have to be associated with him,” Lamborn said in an interview on the Caplis and Silverman radio show on KHOW 630 AM in Denver. “It’s like touching a tar baby, and you get it – you know, you’re stuck, and you’re part of the problem now, and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does, or not, he’ll still get – properly so – the blame, because his policies, for four years, will have failed the American people.”

The “us” Lamborn is talking about are Republicans. The person who will be blamed for the problems is of course Obama.

Lamborn’s comment raised the ire of numerous people, including the heads of the local NAACP, the Urban League of the Pikes Peak Region, and the El Paso County Democratic Party. Each decried his comments as racist because the phrase "tar baby" has been used to denigrate black people.

“The world already views (El Paso County) as ultra conservative, ultra-right-wing, Tea-Party-loving, gay bashing, an epicenter of hate,” Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP told The Gazette newspaper. “With two vitriolic words, our own Congressman again sealed our fate.”

Lamborn’s people denied his comments were racial in nature. Instead, they said the reference was made because working with Obama created a sticky situation, a quagmire. The dictionary does indeed define tar baby as “a situation, problem, or the like, that is almost impossible to solve or to break away from.” But if Lamborn only meant to suggests a sticky situation, then why use a term that could so easily be seen as racially derogatory? Why not just say quagmire? Why liken the President, instead of the situation, to tar baby as was the case when the fallout from the Iran-Contra affair was dubbed George H.W. Bush's tar baby?

The reason, I believe, is simple: He knew what he was saying (“and you get it”), and he knew that he could cite the folktale “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby” for cover. Lamborn also may have made a Freudian slip, giving away more about how he and the Republican Party view the President.

Allow me to elaborate in a conspiratorial way: Brer Fox (the GOP) hates Brer Rabbit (Obama), so Brer Fox creates a tar baby (the debt ceiling crisis) in order to trap Brer Rabbit and destroy him. Why? The answer may be as simple as Brer Rabbit is to sassy, to uppity for Brer Fox. Brer Rabbit eventually was able to trick Brer Fox, who threw Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit, sullied by the tar baby (debt ceiling debate), was able to escape.

With the debt ceiling debate over for now we have irrefutable proof that the role of the GOP (Brer Fox) is to destroy Obama (Brer Rabbit) by any means necessary. Now Obama has to figure out how he will deal with the GOP from this day forward. No longer can he look to them to make compromises that are good for the country. He has to understand that from now on, he must seek the support of his party faithful and any moderates on the other side of the aisle.

While many Republicans, especially those buoyed by the Tea Party, see their roles as burning down the house that is the federal government, polls show that many supporters of the Tea Party (57 percent in some polls) seek compromise. They supported the Tea Party not because they wanted to destroy the government or Obama, but rather because they wanted a government that would work, that would no longer follow the status quo.

Instead, those people helped to create more dysfunction than ever. And now it is up to Obama to remind them of that mistake so it can be corrected in 2012.

The Summer of Our Disconnect, II

The dueling news briefings from President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner Friday night shows just how out of touch we have become in this country. Despite the widespread belief that the government must deal with the deficit, taxes, and the debt ceiling, Washington has again fallen short of what needs to be done. And the reasons have little to do with the economy, and more to do with the political stridency that engulfs our nation.

Indeed, when the Tea Party began its push to oust Democrats and moderate Republicans from Congress its members screamed about a new "revolution" sweeping across our nation. Now, it is time for the people who believe in this country, who want Washington to work toward the betterment of society to stand up and begin that revolution by declaring -- as the President did last week -- "enough is enough."

Since the debt talks began, the White House has offered several plans to cut the deficit. But Republicans, who ran on the promise that they would cut the deficit, have continued to walk away from the negotiating table. One must ask why? When we do, we have to realize that the efforts of the GOP are not to fix America, but to block Obama.

In doing so, they have shown that they are incapable of reaching a compromise, which they have made a dirty word in American politics. The arrogance of the GOP freshmen class has put the nation in danger. Even if one argues against raising the tax rate, it is hard for anyone seeking true deficit reduction to argue against changing a federal tax code that allows such corporations as GE to pay little or no taxes on multi-billion profits.

Indeed, The New York Times recently published an article in which it looked at subsidies contained in the federal budget. Based on government and private studies, $1.8 trillion could be saved by eliminating those subsidies, which about $1.6 million a year for farmers to store peanuts and cotton in Georgia while waiting for price increases. It also includes $200 million for small and rural airports around the country some of which have no more than three flights a day. Another $100 million in tax breaks is given to owners of Nascar race tracks.

When George W. Bush tried to remove the farm storage subsidy he met with opposition from Republicans and Democrats, some of whom also have not been willing to compromise. President Obama has also tried to get rid of the subsidy. He failed both times. What we see is a basic philosophy that says, "We must cut the budget as long as it does not mean cutting a program I pushed."

For instance, in an another recent article The Times noted that several freshmen Republican lawmakers have been pushing government sponsored projects that they campaigned against during the last election. Such hypocrisy is rampant in Washington, as if how we refer to a program changes its meaning. In the new Congress, earmarks are not earmarks because the terminology has been changed.

That is why it is time for moderates and independents to take over the revolution that the Tea Party claims it started. No longer can they sit on the sidelines shaking their heads in disgust. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the foundation of democracy.

"We've shown ourselves willing to step up on something the Republicans ran on," President Obama said at his news briefing where he scolded Boehner for walking away from the negotiating table yet again.

And of course, Boehner, in his own briefing, placed blame on the President, saying he will no longer negotiate with the White House. As House Speaker he has that right. But failure to negotiate with the President on a national deficit shows a total disconnect on the part of the GOP, and a total disregard for what many Americans want -- a government that works.

The Summer of Our Disconnect

President Barack Obama is correct: Enough is enough. We must end the stridency that drives our actions, and find new ways of working together to create the America that will allow all of us to thrive. If we do not then we are doomed to continuously repeat the failures that strangle our society.

Even before the debate over reducing the national debt and raising the debt ceiling began, the President repeatedly extended a hand to the Republican Party in an effort to bring about bipartisanship. He has even sought to present himself as the mature centrist in the room.

But Republicans and their leaders have continuously balked at any efforts of bipartisanship, basically proclaiming that being the party of “No!” when they were in the minority wasn’t good enough. They had to be the party of “Hell no!” Now that Republicans are in the majority in the House of Representatives and hung over from last year’s mid-term election, they have become even more petulant in their efforts to make Obama a one-term President.

The result is too many people have become like one note musicians, playing the same sorry tune day after day, week after week, month after month.

That is why it is time for the mature adult in the room to deal with the whiny children. The Republicans have shown more than anything that reason and doing what is right for the nation is beyond their grasp.

Now, the nation faces a possible debt crisis, one so real that China, which carries a large portion of the U.S. debt, urged national leaders to come up with a solution. While one could easily argue that the current debate is just the usual political brinksmanship, it would be wrong to do so. The battle in Washington is a larger version of the bizarre nature of politics in America today. With the nation still reeling from the Great Recession, people are angry, and from that anger come extremism. That has led to a failure to deal with some of the nation’s most pressing issues, including stimulating the economy in an effort to create more jobs.

Just look at the maliciousness that permeates America and invades our political discourse. People who disagree with the President have been unable to debate the issues without using scatological references. To say that such references are just part of the messiness that is democracy is to negate the true nature of what is before us, particularly when such references come from the people who are employed to inform us, as was the case in Mark Halperin’s inappropriate reference to Obama.

But it is not just the lack of erudition from pundits that should concern us. In Minnesota, for example, the state government has been shut down for several weeks because the Democratic governor and the Republican-led legislature cannot come to a budget agreement. Instead of dealing with the fiscal issues facing that state – a projected $5 billion deficit bequeathed by former Gov. Tim Pawlenty – elected officials there are bogged down in such hot-button issues as public-school vouchers, stem-cell research, and abortion.

Moralism has trumped efforts to deal with the state’s nearly 7 percent unemployment rate or its budget deficit. According to Walter Shapiro, a correspondent for The New Republic, “the state’s politics are probably even more polarized than those on Capitol Hill.” State Sen. John Marty, a veteran liberal Democrat, told Shapiro: “Eight years ago we had just one Michele Bachmann in the Minnesota senate. Now, we have maybe twenty or forty.”

Things are not that much better in Wisconsin, where recall efforts are underway to remove nine state senators – six Republicans and three Democrats -- stemming from the legislative battle earlier this year when Democrats fled the state to avoid a budget vote. The acrimony in that state is so intense that Republicans fielded “fake Democrats” to force primaries in several districts. The real Democrats won earlier this week and are set to meet their Republican opponents.

A similar effort to undue the last election is underway in Michigan, where Democrats upset at Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and members of his party are circulating recall petitions. The Michigan Education Association, a teachers’ union, has joined the battle because of legislation that weakens the state’s teacher tenure law.

It does not stop there. In Alabama, Scott Beason, a 41-year-old Republican state senator, has so polarized people there that even members of his own party have railed against him. During a corruption investigation during which he wore a concealed recording device, Beason, a conservative, was overheard disparaging his fellow Republicans and calling black people “aborigines.”

In addition, Beason has put his political agenda ahead of what is important for various parts of the state. His contesting of a budget plan to help Jefferson County, the home of Birmingham, resulted in layoffs of a quarter of the county’s workforce; courthouse closings; delayed maintenance on county roads and bridges; and a cut in the workweek for the sheriff’s office.

Beason says he’s standing up for what he believes in, even if it means parts of his state must fall. The same seems to be happening in Washington, where Republicans have decided that their individual beliefs trump societal needs. It is the most dramatic disconnect within the political system in some time.