I’ve coined the term “irrational intelligence” to define that which informs people to do and say plainly ignorant things … with the conviction of a genius (or a saint).
Think, for example, of people who say that President Obama is an incompetent leader whose socialist policies have ruined the economy. (Incidentally, polls indicated that the state of the economy was the most important issue facing voters this cycle.) Those people couldn’t care any less that Obama has in fact done more to reinforce America’s capitalist system than any president in recent history, which includes implementing policies that have facilitated record gains on Wall Street.
I also feel constrained to note here that, despite all the (purely-for-ratings) media hype, the Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate only means more congressional gridlock (i.e., now that they control both chambers of Congress).
After all, Republicans won’t be able to enact any of their wacko pledges, like repealing Obamacare, because Obama retains the power to veto any legislation. But they will have more power to continue what they’ve been doing from day one of his presidency: obstructing key items on Obama’s progressive agenda, like comprehensive immigration reform.
And, lest you forget, here is how no less a person than then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky betrayed the real goal of their gridlock agenda on the July 10, 2011, edition of FOX News:
Well that is true, making Obama a one-term President is my single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country.
For his part, Obama has pledged to respond to greater Republican obstructionism by doubling down on his use of executive powers to move the country forward, wherever possible.
This is why one can fairly sum up the results of these midterm elections with the idiom, plus ça change. It is also why I couldn’t care any less who won or lost any race in particular.
That said:
I’m not on the ballot this fall. But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.
(CNN, October 6, 2014)
This was how Obama touted his policies as campaigning entered the final stretch. And, to any rational mind, it made perfect sense for him to do so.
After all, among other salutary accomplishments, “these policies:”
- rescued the economy from the brink of another Great Depression and set it on course for years of sustainable growth;
- led to a halving of the fiscal deficit and more than doubling of the stock market;
- provided healthcare coverage for millions of uninsured Americans;
- cut the ranks of the unemployed almost in half;
- mandated pay equity for women, marriage equality for gays, and minimum wage for all; and
- stopped the hemorrhaging of American blood and treasure by ending unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Surely these undisputed accomplishments must compel any rational mind to consider how much better still life in America would be if Republicans hadn’t decreed that any compromise with this president would be tantamount to treason.
Meanwhile, they have become possessed of such jihadist ideology that Republicans appear unable to even conceive of congressional Democrats obstructing a Republican president’s agenda the way they have obstructed Obama’s. And, given the truly enviable state of affairs in the United States today (notwithstanding media-driven irrational despair), one shudders to think what Republicans will do to vindicate McConnell’s triumphal clarion call to “turn this country around,” which is only slightly more politically correct than their good-ole-boy call to “take our country back.”
On the other hand, apropos of those congressional Democrats, Obama had just cause to expect that, even if political strategy compelled them to keep him at arms length, they would be hailing his accomplishments.
But such was the irrational intelligence that informed most campaign rhetoric this fall that Democrats were competing with Republicans not only to treat him like a tar baby, but also to shun his policies, well, like the Ebola virus. This alone is why they deserved to lose control of the Senate and the most seats in the House since WWII. I mean, is it really any wonder over 65 percent of eligible voters (mostly Democrats and Independents) decided to eschew the dog and pony show candidates put on this fall…?
Frankly, all that was left was for Democrats to begin aping Republican flat-earthers by campaigning for creationism (or “intelligent design” – as right-wing zealots call it … irrationally enough) to be taught in schools as historical fact, and evolution as junk science.
You’d have thought Democrats would welcome the opportunity to run on Obama’s policies, while heaping scorn on the Republicans’ obstructionist policies that were designed to do nothing but undermine Obama’s – the welfare of the country be damned. Except that, as one mysterious White House official might say, far too many Democrats are “chickenshit” politicians who will do and say anything – no matter how irrational – that they think will induce their invariably ignorant constituents to vote for them….
Only this explains no less a person than David Axelrod, Obama’s most celebrated adviser, declaring – on Sunday’s edition of NBC’s Meet the Press – that “it was a mistake” for Obama to tout his policies as he did. This signaled Axelrod’s belief that Democrats were right to play along with the zeitgeist of irrational intelligence by shunning Obama’s policies too.
But nothing betrays this surreal, oxymoronic state of American politics quite like Noam Scheiber, Obama’s most celebrated critic, confessing on the same day – in “My Book Argued That Obama ‘Fumbled the Recovery.’ Here’s What I Got Wrong,” New Republic, November 2, 2014 – that criticisms of Obama’s policies have been proven wrong:
My mistake was to assume Obama’s errors were strategic ones — errors that would doom the economy to years of slow growth and brutally high unemployment. In fact, most were not.
What’s more, Scheiber notes that Obama’s policies overcame Republican obstructionism to compare favorably not only with those of other world leaders who had to deal with the 2008 financial crisis, but also with those of his predecessors, like Ronald Reagan, who had to deal with financial crises that were not nearly as grave.
Again, only the delirious appeal of irrational intelligence explains why so many voters bought (hook, line, and sinker) the Republican narrative about Obama and his policies being the worst thing to happen to the United States since Nixon and Watergate.
Hell, their alternative universe provided such fertile ground for growing Republican support that some candidates even argued that Sarah Palin would’ve done a better job than Obama has as president. And only in this universe would you have found poor miners in West Virginia and rich bankers on Wall Street singing the same blues about Obama’s policies; notwithstanding that his policies have done more to benefit such disparate groups as miners and bankers than those of any other president since FDR.
I’m on record lamenting the irrational intelligence that informs the support so many poor White people give Republican candidates. Nothing is sadder (or more irrational) in this context than these poor suckers railing against Obamacare – even though Obamacare provides the opportunity of a lifetime for them to get comprehensive healthcare.
And don’t get me started on the ignorance inherent in voters complaining about Washington gridlock, but voting for Republican candidates who openly pledge to do little more than create more gridlock; or in voters decrying Obama as an incompetent leader, but sputtering Daffy Duck-like gibberish when they’re challenged to explain what makes him so….
Alas, irrational intelligence prevails in politics today as surely as irrational exuberance prevailed on Wall Street during the Dot.com (bubble) days of the 1990s.
The effect of the former played out like a tragic comedy recently, when the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, tried to quarantine a perfectly healthy nurse (in a tent in the parking lot of a hospital – with no heat, no running water, and just a Port-a-Potty to relieve herself) just because she had been treating Ebola victims in West Africa:
Rational intelligence dictated that he should have been far more concerned about the tens of thousands of New Jersey residents walking around with the flu – each of whom posed a far greater danger to public health than this nurse. But irrational intelligence, which dictated that it was politically expedient to treat her like a leaper, prevailed.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Republicans won, despite irrational promises to, among other things:
- repeal Obamacare;
- return to the failed trickledown economics of cutting taxes for the rich and cutting benefits for the poor; and
- waste in Syria the same amount of blood and treasure the United States wasted in Iraq.
The American people deserve what they will surely get. Which only leaves me to square this vicious circle by noting how fitting it is that Mitch McConnell, the politician who personifies Republican obstructionism, has been duly rewarded with a promotion to Senate majority leader.
I would be remiss, however, if I did not comment on the dramatic contrast between the messianic popularity Obama enjoyed in 2008, when he was first elected, and the diabolic unpopularity dogging him today, as he ends his career in elective politics with a thorough shellacking of his Democratic Party. Nothing punctuated this apparent fall from grace quite like McConnell’s Democratic challenger in Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, deeming Obama so politically toxic that she refused, more than thrice, to say (on the campaign trail and in debates) if she voted for him. Indeed, as I referenced above, the one bipartisan feature of these midterm elections was the way both Republican and Democratic candidates blithely maligned Obama.
But I warned it would be thus:
I’m on record stating my suspicion that many Whites voted for Obama in 2008 more as a gesture of racial absolution than of political faith. These AP findings bear that out. And having thusly absolved themselves of their sins of racism (with this one, historic act), many of them now feel liberated to give way to their racial prejudices without fear of being called racists.
(“Romney vs. Obama: Race (Still) Matters,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 1, 2012)
Yet, notwithstanding all of the above, voters informed by rational intelligence should not despair … too much. Because, by the next election cycle in 2016, Republican politicians will have reaped the discord and dysfunction they sowed to such degree that even Republican voters will be seeking out candidates who not only boldly champion Obama’s policies, but also proudly embrace Obama himself.
Hey, HOPE springs eternal….
But this allusion to 2016 constrains me to note that Bill and Hillary Clinton might be the biggest losers this election cycle. After all, Democrats embraced them with as much alacrity as they shunned Obama.
Which is why it’s humbling enough that not a single Democrat they endorsed in a truly competitive race won. But that they could not even help incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor hold onto his seat in their home state of Arkansas must give them pause about Hillary’s presidential prospects.
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