Political Powers Activate! Go Go Pointless Punditry!

It's been more than a week since Bush invited the Democrats up to the White House to discuss the emergency spending bill with the qualification that he would not change his course, that no "negotiation" would take place. A small event, I suppose, but I couldn't shake an uneasiness about the whole ordeal and I have found myself, without knowing it, thinking back on that story, trying to get at something I didn't quite understand, trying to articulate what disturbed me about it. It wasn't the specifics or the details of the event, or even the particular stubbornness on the part of Bush, the unwillingness to recognize the Democrats as a party representing a legitimate concern of the American people - that is to say, our troops, our standing in the world, our economic future. Those are partisan arguments, and to get angry about those things is to miss the broader point.

What was memorable about Bush's invitation was what it represented, how it confirmed for me something that has been growing in our government for so long and seemed to come suddenly to the surface. It's not that we are divided (although we are), or that we seem ever-more steadfast in our opposing beliefs (although we do); those things are merely symptoms. And they are not because of one party or the other, nor are they more concentrated in Republicans than in Democrats, though they may seem so because the Republicans were in power for so long. What really happened when Bush made that statement was something much more fundamental. In that moment consensus and compromise - the genesis of our entire system of government - were abandoned for an advantage in political maneuvering. In that moment what was lost was the purpose for governing at all, any moral center which might guide us in a complex and dangerous world, and what replaced it was pure calculation.

Now that might make a Game Theorist giddy with delight, but it makes me sad to think that politicians in this country are now subject to a Prisoner's Dilemma they can no longer control, one that has so many lives hanging in the balance. Instead of solving what has become a political, economic, and military disaster not so unlike Vietnam, our elected officials are bickering on Capitol Hill in an attempt to ensure their own futures and vindicate their own perspectives. As divided a nation as we are now, that frustration may be the only thing that will unite us.