The Sovereign Mind

David Axerlrod on Meet the Press (my emphasis added):

MR. GREGORY: All right, so how was [the Republican party's] influence felt [in the stimulus bill]?

MR. AXELROD: Well, I think in tax–in terms of tax cuts. I think the tax cuts reflect some of their, their thinking. I mean, we agreed with them in terms of tax cuts to help small businesses get through this. They–their–the AMT is now added. The AMT fix is now added to this. The, the, the Web site recovery.gov was suggested by Representative Cantor, the leader of the opposition in the House.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I don’t think so. Notice the words he struggles with. He wants to portray the tax cuts as concessions to Republicans, but at the same time does not way to give away the credit for their inclusion from the Democrats. The worst thing Democrats could do right now is concede the point that Republicans have been making for a long time: that Democrats are against tax cuts. But at the same time they want to be able to point to the tax cuts as evidence of concessions to the Republicans. They’re walking a fine line and getting away with it for the most part.

My impression of the Democratic view of bipartisanship: “We welcome ideas from across the isle, as long as they are also our ideas.”

I don’t blame Democrats for wanting to limit the Republican influence on this bill. Let’s face it: they won that right in November. But don’t try to portray it as bipartisan because a Republican suggested a website. Because, you know, clearly the success or failure of the stimulus package hinges on recovery.gov.

I am always impressed with independent thinkers, which is what I strive to be, if you haven’t figured that out by the title of my blog.  This is probably why I was very impressed with Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama.  It wasn’t just the fact that Powell endorsed a Democrat, but I thought his explanation was extremely well thought-out, and showed that he had made the decision for the right reasons, without relying on any partisan talking-points (although some disagree with me on that).

Today my attention was drawn to an article by another independent thinker: Orson Scott Card. Although a Democrat, he has written articles before criticizing his own party. But this one’s a doozy:

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

He goes on in his scathing criticism of both the Democratic party, as well as the media for failing to report on the facts of the story.

I believe he is right as far as the media goes. Journalists have, for the most part, gotten lazy. It seems most prefer to regurgitate what some other news story said, rather than do real research. That’s no more apparent than in the current election, where the news only reports the horse race, rather than talking about real issues.

However, as far as the Democratic party goes, I think he goes a bit too far. I do agree with him that McCain and Bush did try to pass stricter regulation on Fannie and Freddie. But I don’t think it’s 100% accurate to say that the failure to do so was all the Democrats’ fault. After all, Republicans were in charge of Congress at the time. The bill passed the committee vote 9 to 11 (down party lines, with Republicans favoring the bill to add more regulation), but the Republican leadership did not bring it up for a full vote, despite McCain’s attempt to revive it by becoming a co-sponsor. You could argue that Republicans didn’t because they knew it would fail since no Democrats supported it. So there’s room for debate, but at least I don’t think it’s as cut-and-dry and Card suggests.

Additionally, his column points out that all of this started under Clinton. That is true, but Republicans had six years to correct it, and failed to do so. It seems there is plenty of blame to go around.

Still, I credit him for at least thinking for himself and holding his own party accountable. We could use a lot more of that.