Ya know, Washington isn't really any worse than usual these days

We and the pundits and most other people (including me) often gnash our teeth and wail about how broken government is these days and how nothing can get accomplished.

But thinking back over the almost five decades since I started paying attention, I've come to the conclusion that it really isn't any worse than usual right now.

(I am referring to the collective zeitgeist, not individual lives. Those have their own rythms and ups and downs.)

With a few exceptions, in just about every year I can recall, the zeitgeist was "times are especially bad right now. I can't ever remember when it was this bad.". People said it when I was a teenager and they're still saying it now.

Every single Congress has been caught in some form of gridlock or other quagmire. I remember one time back in the late 80's or early 90's thinking "If I hear the word gridlock one more time, I'm gonna go crazy."

Throughout my conscious lifetime, Republicans have always been nasty, and Democrats have always been wimpy and/or divided. Some great tjings have been accomplished like Medicare, civil rights and environmemtal protection. But such accomplishments were the exceptions rather than the rules. And they usually happened after a long and muddy slog through the political muck and mire.

The 60 's were, politically a horror show. If you think people are critical of Obama? This is nothing compared to what LBJ was subjected to. And we all know about Richard Nixon....And the 70's were a period when the whole country was demoralized and no matter what government tried to do, the economy had glue in the gears.

Even the latter 1990's, which was probably the most upbeat period I can recall forvthe country, politics was a dreadful swamp.

Maybe i'm just saying that whever we get carried away in the heat of various moments, it might be a good idea to take a breath and get some perspective.

There is always a tendency for people to feel like the past is better than it was.

and I was just telling someone the other day that I didn't support HRC in the primaries in part out of lingering PTSD on from the Clinton years past. Somehow I was imagining it would be less bad with another candidate...

I do wonder how it is that other representative democracies have it so much easier, and I wonder how much longer the "money" side of things will keep voting for us if we just never get it together - looking at our global reserve currency status, and the money poured into our bond markets rather than into other markets that seem so much more functional.

We have a tendency to look in the short-term with a negative outlook and ignore the good, and look back on things with a positive outlook and ignore the bad, in our personal lives, politics, everything.

Things are never as good or as bad as they seem.

by shrub's standards, watergate was a quaint little crime.

who in washington even remotely entertained the idea of shrub resigning, let alone for members of his own party tell him he had to do it?

republicans never liked carter, but they accepted him as president. they just wanted to beat him for a second term.
but starting with clinton, they stopped respecting the office of the president entirely; and with obama they completely see him as the enemy.

republicans used to be people you could disagree with but still respect. not these days. they've organized themselves around a set of criminally corrupt principles and they offer nothing of positive value to anyone other than the filthy, souless rich.

Since at least the late 60s they have been the vicious bastards they are now.

No president has dealt with such contentious behaviour. No one has been forced to limp basically without full seating and congressional hold ups than this guy. There has been no division in the Republican party as there have been now. Don't marginalize this. Marginalizing this is a way of hiding a seriously fracture as though it's part and parcel which it is not. You might like living in your wonderland and having making people make false comparison of this president to past president's as though everything is the fuckin' same. It ABSOLUTELY NOT the same. I won't subscribe to this mentality. UNREC!

I am not marganilizing anything -- as evidenced by the fact that I still get worked up here.

But President Obama is far from being the most abused and problem prone president (so far).

Shrub basically left office in such disgrace that they didn't even want him at the GOP convention.

Duribg the Clinton presidency the political systm was subsumed by impeachment (over a very sma,l bit of petsonal stupidity) for over a year....

Bush Sr was uncerimoneously voted out of office

Reagan was far from beloved during his presidency...Not to mention Iran Contra crisis.

During Carters presidency, he wad widely dismissed by Democrats as well as Republicans, and ultimately branded as isolated and bumbling.

WE know how hated Nixon and what happened to him.....

LBJ was reviled about Vietnam -- and by Republicans about his social programs -- and was forced not to run because he was so unpopulat.

Not to mention JFk

but after going down your list, I've changed my mind. LBJ was driven from office and the abuse heaped on him probably led to his early death. Kennedy's bitter challenge to Carter, especially his refusal th shake his hand after Carter won the nomination, probably cost Carter the election. And the assault on the Clintons was like nothing I've ever seen. The President's defenders feel he's bring abused, but at least he has defenders. Lyndon and Tricky Dick had none, and Carter had damned few. Hell, the Shrub can't leave Texas. Not to mention Jack Kennedy.

the state of the economy has been BADLY overblown.

It is not good, but our standard of living is so high right now as a whole, there really is not comparison to past tough times.

Un/underemployment is higher that it has been since the 70s, but most people still are going out to eat in nice chain restaurants, have technology in their lives like cell phones and big screen tvs ...

It has been hyped up by wall street to get the bailout right at the end of Buscho, and by the right wing since as the highlight of their efforts to marginalize and make BO a one term president.

The party politics are worse now than ever. This NOT to say it was all hand holding and hugs and kisses, but the Rs have incrementally gotten worse and worse since the 90s.

The 90s were bad politically - it all comes down to having a D in the white house. If there is a D president, the Rs heads explode and the media follows them into whatever rat holes they lead them to.

An R president starts out with a blank sheet, and can get away with a fair amount of crap with a MSM that coddles them and Ds in congress who have a sense of fair play (to put it nicely), a D president is maligned from day one, faces the most extreme opposition from the Rs in congress and a "liberal press" all too ready to spew whatever nonsense the Rs tell them to.

I vaguely remember the chaos of the '60's. I definitely remember Vietnam and Watergate. I remember the Iran hostage crisis and how feckless it made Carter look. I remember hating Reagan and yawning at Bush Sr. I remember being really turned off by the Republicans after the way they behaved during the Clinton years (but I give them a little bit of a pass because Clinton wasn't exactly blameless in all that). The Dubya years? We won't even go there.

But for sheer batshit crazy, I think nothing matches the current crop of escaped mental patients in the House and Senate. They can't even get a one-sentence debt ceiling bill passed, for God's sake. Add that to the undercurrent of racism and sheer stupidity in so much of the electorate these days, three wars, and the disastrous economy, and I honestly can't recall a worse period -- not in my lifetime anyway.

Sometimes my own overriding feeling is not that we're getting worse -- More that we are going backward.

Human rights, for example. I had assumed that the worst and most blatant defenders of racism had crawled back under their rocks, and the majority had moved beyond segregation and Jim Crow. We had a long way to go on a practical level, but the basic matter seemed settled. But now the racists have crawled out from under their rocks again -- they're more sophisticated and know how to sound somewhat acceptable with code words. And they have also found new targets -- i.e. immigratnts. But they're back, and are being taken seriously by far too many people again.

Likewise with things like the safety net and environmental protection. The batshit crazy right and their corporate masters seem determined to strip them away and go back in time.

So what's worse is that we are in danger of regressing.

Summer seems to set everyone on edge also.. never quite understood that one myself..


I love that next to last sentence.. Politics was (is) a dreadful swamp. It is..