I won't try to explain, because that will bore you. Let's just say I've been busy and uninspired — the latter being in large part a consequence of the former.
Well, I read something today that inspired me.
I know, it comes from the New York Times. The same Times that so many of you regard as incurably biased in favor of the left. Let's leave that debate aside for a moment, so that I may share said inspirational passage. It comes from Gail Collins, a former editorial page editor and now a witty op-ed columnist. Collins' column today riffs on the travails of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who has been in the news lately for leaving the Palmetto State leaderless while he spent a week in Argentina breaking up with his mistress. Collins writes:
Until Wednesday’s unpleasantness, Sanford was chairman of the Republican Governors Association, otherwise known as the Association of Possible Presidential Contenders Plus Arnold. Over the past few years, he has tried to woo the party’s base with antics like bringing two piglets into the Capitol to protest political pork and refusing to accept $700 million in federal stimulus money aimed at preventing massive layoffs of public school teachers. For a state with an unemployment rate above 12 percent, that ranks 39th in public school performance, that last caper might not seem all that entertaining. But it did draw the attention and affection of right-wing commentators, who nudged Sanford right up the potential-contender ladder.
This, like much of the rest of Collins' column, made me chuckle. For a moment, it also injected my moderate-liberal veins with a rush of schadenfreude at the pitiful state of the Republican Party. It seems the only way for a Republican to gain nomination for high office is to appeal to an increasingly lunatic fringe commentariat, thereby ensuring doom with the general electorate.
But then, it made me sad for America.
For our constitutional republic to live up to our founders' promise, we need robust competition — not just in the market for goods and services, but also in the marketplace of policy ideas. And as the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt degenerates into the party of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, none of us is well served. A sick GOP emboldens the Democrats who control Washington to make policy that would not survive a stronger, more thoughtful opposition. The extreme left is likelier to make bad ideas into the law of the land.
We've seen this movie before, and it ends only when the country winds up in such bad shape that we can no longer tolerate single-party rule and finally throw the bums out. The Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s and the repudiation of Bush-Cheney Republicanism in 2006 and 2008 are two recent examples.
So what can we do to prevent a sure-to-disappoint sequel? Well, if you haven't read my other rants about civic responsibility, I'll repeat my broken-record mantra here: be at least partially engaged in a mature, serious debate about public affairs instead of wholly immersed in popular culture. That means ignoring the yellers and demagogues and actually reading something now and then. Or, if you simply can't give up that America's Got Talent and Real Housewives of New Jersey habit for a steady diet of Congressional Quarterly and C-SPAN, at least throw in a dose or two of CNN here and there.
I'll do my part: I promise not to let another three months go by before I post here again.
See you soon.
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