A Sleeping Giant Stirs

It’s like when a person, a fat and lazy person prone to overeating and oversleeping, is prodded awake finally. They don’t spring up all refreshed and ready to do things; they open one eye and move it about for a while. That is America in this moment -- not fully conscious but no longer asleep, a bit disgruntled as if shaken from slumber by some unholy pounding. To quote Robyn Blumner's column: "There is a limit to how much incompetence, greed, corruption, prevarication, secrecy and sanctimony the American people will stand." But the disturbing thing is (and the reason for my half-awake metaphor) is that 47% of voters decided Republican, in spite of it all, while 52% went for the Democrats. Not a resounding mandate, and not a body public that is as yet fully awake.

Getting the Republicans out of leadership of the House and Senate constituted Step One and Step Two. The departure of Donald Rumsfeld (who was thrown to the yelping dogs) can be seen as Step Three, as it will lead, along with the Baker-Hamilton commission report on Iraq, to a change of course in that disastrous enterprise.

The terribly ironic thing is that (I’m convinced) the difference in the Dems taking back Congress, or at least the Senate, was Bush’s pronouncement on the eve of the election that Rumsfeld was "doing a fantastic job" and would hold his office until January, 2009. (But we can look forward to a big medal being placed around his neck in the Oval office.) The arrogant and unpopular Secretary of Defense was such a resounding failure that The Military Times called for his firing a few days before the election. This followed the entreaties of many generals and high-ranking officers who had grown plenty discouraged by his willful incompetence.

I believe that the final factor, that last little swing in the undecided voters which served to confound Rove’s math, was that of military families and friends finally fully fed up with the president’s policies and statements – which also included the nugget, "Absolutely, we’re winning the war." Worth mentioning also in this vein would be Cheney, a man whose diatribes while in office are those of a person either ruthlessly dishonest or totally insane, who audaciously said that, regardless of who wins control of Congress, the Iraq policy would move "full speed ahead." This declaration by the Mad Hatter/Darth Vader of Washington was widely publicized and cost the Republicans more than a few votes as well.

So what are the other steps? First would be the fulfillment of the Democratic campaign pledges encapsulated in their "6 in '06" mini-platform. Although they are tepid tea for a nation calling for a double-espresso wake-up call, they're a start. These would be bills for raising the minimum wage, enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, promoting stem-cell research, reducing university costs by making tuition tax deductible and halving interest rates on student loans, and giving the government the power to negotiate with drug companies to lower prices in the Medicare prescription drug program.

Then should come the restoration of those civil liberties which have been stripped from the American people – literally while the giant slept. Only a slender minority of the population is even aware of the ramifications of the recently passed Military Commissions Act, which allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for any citizen suspected of giving "aid to the enemy." In other words, if a military tribunal, whose members are hand-picked by the administration, decides to, they can cart off anyone, for indefinite detention, without even being allowed legal representation or being told the evidence or charges against them. This is the way it is done in what are commonly referred to as police states. Totally Kafkaesque! And this was enacted in a country that has historically prided itself on its strong protection of civic liberties, and for what reason? It’s as if we were suffering multiple daily terrorist attacks here on the home soil and needed to do something drastic to curb the emergency situation. But no, there have been no attacks; there is no emergency. Just as there are no flag burnings, yet the Republican Congress wasted much time trying to get a constitutional amendment passed prohibiting it.

On the subject also of civil liberties would be the revocation of some of the more blatant Patriot Act provisions (like surreptitious home searches and keyboard tapping), the immediate stoppage of data mining of phone and e-mail records, and the prohibition of warrantless wiretapping.

Next would be the enactment of legislation which would provide a national system of healthcare insurance. We can and should do this, just as all industrialized countries already have.

After that would have to be action on the multi-headed beast of what is collectively called "the environment." Global warming is rapidly approaching a serious tipping point, one major indicator being that polar melting increased 6% last year. [Edited note from 2008: This trend has continued to accelerate dramatically] What we need is a federal program of Manhattan Project scope and urgency for alternative energy sources, encompassing full funding and subsidization of already existent non-carbon methods of energy creation, and heavily funded research into new and improved methods.

Another positive step would be true campaign reform laws which allow for public financing of campaigns. This would not only take the "For Sale" sign off the backs of representatives and senators, but would free up their time and energy to do their jobs better, as it’s estimated that 80% of their free time is spent raising money to pay for their next campaign. This is the nexus of the "culture of corruption" which pervades Washington like a cancer. A huge side-benefit of unhinging these guys from campaign monies would be to remove the practice of "earmarks," a most damaging practice in the modern legislative process wherein members insert spending authorizations on pet projects (at the behest of their campaign contributors) to bills that have already been vetted, thus the "pork" outlays are not seen by most lawmakers, yet are voted into the budget.

There are steps to take after these. In no particular order, they would include the reestablishment of tax fairness, lobbyist reform, investigations of Iraq war contracts, rescinding of the huge oil company subsidies, a Social Security fix, beating back the deficit, and the damn flying cars we were all promised. But let’s put the whip to our public servants to work on these first, the supposition being that the new Democratic leadership is less beholden to the retrograde forces of the religious/conservative right and the lethal (for Americans’ best interests) large corporations. [Edit from January, 2008: Very little of the agenda turned out to be possible, with GWB and his cronies still in power, and without a veto-proof Congress. On to November!!]