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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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In This Issue:
-Representatives and Budgets -Democrat’s
advantage -Obama Land (Some points along the way to…) |
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OUR ROAD TO OBAMA-LAND SOME HIGH/LOW POINTS ALONG THE WAY By Ivan W. Parkins What
raucous health care debates and related news have disclosed recently is that
our House of Representatives is grossly dysfunctional. I believed that I saw that coming half a
century ago. Then, I, at
least, had respect for Speaker Rayburn.
There have now been some positive changes in the House, but mostly
they have been overwhelmed by other changes in our political system. The seizure of authority by the Supreme
Court in 1962, did produce greater justice in
districting. But the big changes were
the continuing growth of business in Washington and of our population,
separating Representatives more and more from their constituents. Along with that separation came the
increased role of the mass media as our main link between individual citizens
and their Representatives.
Prior to 1956, all newly elected Presidents, if they
had won by majorities of the popular vote, had also won majorities in both
Houses of Congress. That, no doubt,
was due largely to partisan influences, e.g. presidential coattails and
straight-ticket voting. Since 1956,
George Bush in 2004 has been the only Republican President to win a Congress
of his own party along with his popular majority. And Bush’s congressional majority was a
very thin one. All Democrat winners of
the Presidency by popular majorities continued to get Democrat Congresses as
well. Carter, who had won the office
by a majority slimmer than Bush’s, had gotten huge majorities in both Houses
of Congress. To this situation the
media responded with much abuse—of Bush! We
were having a huge expansion of the media, especially with television in
nearly all our homes. And there was an
equally huge expansion of professional communicators, journalists, lawyers,
professors, entertainers, artists, etc.
Never before had these people been so central to our society and
economy. They wanted more political
influence, and their positions enabled them to take it, without even asking. An
early clue to the situation was fallout from President Kennedy’s
assassination. President Johnson
appointed a commission of our most prestigious political and legal leaders,
under the chairmanship of Chief Justice Warren, to investigate the
crime. That Commission did an
extensive and sound job, but found only one simple and well supported
explanation. Various people attempted
to exploit small oversights and ambiguities of the Commission into more
ominous solutions, with very little supporting evidence. The media gave wide notice to many of these
alternatives. For them, it was news,
readership, and money. Even now, opinion polls show that most Americans
distrust the Warren Commissions’ report.
Where would the most crucial political and legal judgments finally
rest in decades to come? The
Presidents, Johnson and Nixon, who followed Kennedy pursued with vigor the
Vietnam War to which Kennedy, following the containment strategy of the Cold
War, had largely committed us. Both
won, by record margins, re-elections to the top office. But, Johnson was discouraged from seeking
an additional term and Nixon was forced to resign. The ultimate authority in
America seemed to rest elsewhere.
Anti-Vietnam movements were rocking college campuses, encouraged by
good press coverage. Meanwhile, the
press was featuring every weakness and casualty that our war effort suffered,
but belittling the enemy brutalities and losses, both of which greatly
exceeded our own. The antiwar
movement, centered in the growing communications professions, assured our
defeat in a war that, even our former enemies have admitted, we were winning
on the battlefields. In
the post Nixon-Vietnam era, President Ford began with wide popular support,
but with a heavily Democrat Congress.
He soon lost media and public support when he pardoned ex-President
Nixon. More thoughtful judgments, many
of them coming later, were that the pardon enabled us to move on with less
division and bitterness.
Meanwhile, the Democrat Congress ran wild; seizing more power over
budgeting, imposing severe limits on police and intelligence agencies,
requiring that banks reduce their strict lending practices, and generally allying
themselves with the “mainstream media.”
From 1954 to 1994 the House of Representative had a 40 year,
unbroken, period of medium to very large Democrat majorities. The fact that several Republican Presidents
in that period labored under a special disadvantage got little attention when
comparing their achievements with those of Democrat Presidents. We
are now involved in a critical political conflict that might have occurred
earlier had it not been from the substantial popular victories, 1980-1992, of
Presidents Reagan and Bush. Meanwhile,
neither Democrat President Carter nor President Clinton produced much basic
political change. And, the House of
Representatives even shifted to a slim Republican majority under Newt
Gingrich’s leadership. That shift
foreshadowed what was to come. The
overwhelmingly “liberal” and Democrat mainstream media of the anti-Vietnam to
Gulf War days were encountering new and substantial competition. Cable news, Fox News, a more broadly
focused WALL STREET JOURNAL, and talk radio were supplying some potent
alternatives to THE NEW YORK TIMES, CBS and its sisters, several news
magazines, and other major elements of the old media “mainstream.” Now,
President Obama’s dilemma is that he
got most of his education, formal and otherwise, from some of the most
“progressive” elements of America’s Democrat indoctrination system. Bush bashing is rapidly losing its
salience. And Obama is
not really closely tuned to “down home” America. He is headed into what closely resembles a
“perfect storm” in three parts. 1. The choice of health care as his first big issue was a
mistake. It affects nearly everyone
personally, and cancels much of the voter apathy that had become an important
part of our politics. Furthermore,
even successful changes are most likely to produce confusion before benefits
for most of those who do benefit. 2. The old “mainstream media,” that have provided much of his
support, are largely addicted to
President baiting, it has been part of their bread and butter. The newer information suppliers are likely
to cover small “liberal” mistakes unlike mainstreaming back-paging of a few tens of millions of innocent deaths from
an errant environmental project, as occurred with the DDT ban. Prior to DDT, mosquito
borne malaria had infected millions of people annually, especially in Africa.
The chemical's discoverer received a Noble prize for the great
reduction in human deaths that it facilitated. But, neither science nor
legal process was sufficient to prevent a ban being rammed through the
Environmental Protection Agency once aggressive environmentalists, fearing
unproven danger to birds, concentrated on it. That ban has now been
lifted, but its cost in human lives far exceeded Hitler's holocaust. 3. The House of Representatives, having long flourished on voter
apathy and festered on odiferous patronage, is not a strong leg on which to
base support for an inherently controversial program.
Whether our First Black President will prove able to advance life in
America is now very much in question. It may become more appropriate if he is
remembered not as Black, but as the too
aberrant and ambitious paladin of
another subculture, the verbal elite. |
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Other Notes: THE DEMOCRAT’S ADVANTAGE—NOW By Ivan W. Parkins Are
you aware that Nancy Pelosi’s Democrat majority in the House, now, is more
than twice as large as any Republican majority that a Republican President
has had since President Hoover won in 1928?
It is also just about average size for the advantage enjoyed by
Democrats most of the time since 1928.
And, every previous Democrat
President has had support of at least one House majority larger than
Pelosi’s. |
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REPRESENTATIVES,
PARTISANSHIP AND BUDGETS By Ivan W. Parkins If
you doubt that, for about 80% of the time that even our oldest citizens
remember, Democrats have dominated the House of Representatives, or that
their majorities in the House have been, on average about 4 times larger than
Republican majorities of that period, please check some of the many available
records. So, how does a
President, when he is faced with a large opposition party majority in the
House, accomplish the things that he believes he must do? He accepts compromises, and that with
modern day Democrats usually means spending, and taxes, for things that
the Republican President opposes at
least in the present budget year. That has been the fate of every recent
Republican President throughout much, or all, of his administration. One
of the first things that Congress did after forcing President Nixon out was
to vote itself a larger role in the process of budgeting—and taxation.
President Ford, advised by his medical experts that a very dangerous
flu season was coming, approved expenditures and legal protections to assure
adequate flu vaccine. In order to get
that, he had to approve a bill that also included a larger expenditure for
job training which he had recently vetoed.
President G.H.W. Bush, trying to counter Saddam Hussein’s seizure of
Kuwait, was faced with Democrat resistance, not only to war, but to enacting
the annual budget without substantial increases of social spending and
taxes. Bush gave up his “no new taxes”
pledge, won the Gulf War, and lost his chance to be reelected. Representation of
at least, some people, arose from medieval traditions, especially
England’s. Kings, in need of more
money looked for ways to raise taxes with less public resistance. They granted, to at least some of their
more prosperous subjects, a voice in taxation issues. Our Constitution goes
considerably farther. It provides for
a House of Representatives first among the several branches. And it further requires that “All bills for
raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; . . .” The Constitution also provides, and
practice has enlarged, roles of the other branches. But, in evaluating how our political
parties have managed finances in recent times, it is important to take notice
of which party has held majorities in the House and how large those
majorities were over what periods of time. Most people will, I
believe find, as I have recently, that partisan advantages of Democrats in
the makeup of the House of Representatives have been even larger than I had
noticed. The
last House majority of Republicans as large as 100 votes was the one that
greeted Herbert Hoover following his election in 1928. FDR’s first five House majorities were: 194,
219, 246, 93, and 105. The next best Republican majority in the House was the
one of the 80th Congress, 57 votes. It was lambasted and ended by Truman in the
elections of 1948. Eisenhower entered office with a House Republican majority
of 10 votes; he was the last Republican President to hold any House majority
until 2000. In his last two years Eisenhower faced a Democrat majority of 130
in the House. But let’s get beyond the
Great Depression, New Deal, and World War II, and the period of their
aftermaths
About half a century ago President Kennedy entered office, along with
a House of Representatives in which the Democrats had an 89 vote
majority. That majority was just about
the average of those the Democrats have enjoyed for 38 of the following 50
years. In that period Democrats had
six House majorities of 100 or more.
Meanwhile, during the Clinton and Bush Administrations there were 12
years of Republican majorities in the House, but they averaged only about 20
votes. The net result, if we make a combination of years and sizes of
majorities, is to give Democrats in the House an advantage of about fourteen
to one over Republicans in shaping the nation’s budgets during the past half
century. Shouldn’t the above conditions count in
assessing the comparative spending habits of Democrat and Republican
Administrations? All
of the above is very much a matter of public record. Too little of it has been given much notice
by our “old mainstream media.” |