Hoping for the Worst

In the valley-of-the-shadow-of-death days of the Iraq war Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (always good for a laugh) rather famously said the Iraq war was lost. In fact, it was disconcerting during the bad old days to wake up to headlines in which the Reid, Pelosi and others felt compelled to point out just how badly things were going and how our paramount need was for a hasty withdrawal from the Iraq quagmire. In spite of the improved situation in Iraq, this particular Democratic meme even today hasn't quite dried up. As one pithy commentator put it, the Democrats are "objectively pro-Al Qaeda" in rooting for the country's enemies.

This week, with a thousand point drop in the stock market and massive federal intervention to prop up the financial architecture of the world's greatest economy, I been wondering whether the Democratic Party and its nominee are "objectively pro-Great Depression." One senses that Obama's team is enjoying the spectacle of the meltdown a bit too much. Savings are being wiped out, after all, companies destroyed and the livelihoods of millions put at risk. Is it really just a political issue? Give me lipstick on a pig any day (inflating the trivial) compared to seeking political advantage over the collapse of the world's largest insurance company and one the world's most important brokerage houses (trivializing the critical.) Is there any price, the loss of a war or economic catastrophe, for instance, that would be excessive to win this election? I guess that's why The Onion calls their election page, "War for the White House."

Of course, this tendency to hope for the worst underlines a key problem Democrats have in the country at large, namely, the sinking feeling that when they add up the debits and credits of America, things don't quite reach a positive balance. In fact, among Democrats, one suspects that there's quite a different concept of America and its place in the world. A 200-year constitutional order, 100-fold increases in living standards every 100 years, the rule of law, expanding civil rights for women and minorities, the liberation of the world periodically from assorted tyrants and would-be tyrants these seem to be invisible or at least obscured substantially by the nation's failings. The nation has failings, no doubt. I keep a list in my back pocket although the items on my list probably aren't the same items on your average Democrat's. But I also know that to fix these problems would be to press toward perfection, and perfection is one of those qualities (in people or countries) that always recedes.