Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, September 26, 2013

From Dr. Seuss to the Bataan Death March: Ted Cruz Does His Stuff

By the time I checked in with C-SPAN on Wednesday morning, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, was into the twenty-first hour of his effort to prevent the Senate from funding Obamacare and keeping the government operational. Frankly, he was looking surprisingly good for it. His hair was still in place; his dark suit didn’t appear wrinkled. The only visible sign that he’d been up all night was that his top shirt button was open, and his blue necktie loose around his neck. And he was still going at it, riffing up a lengthy metaphor about how members of Congress, with their supposed exemption from the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, would be sitting in the first class of Obamacare whilst millions of Americans were loaded into coach, or even the baggage compartment.

On occasions like these, the long-windedness in which almost all senators specialize comes in handy, and not just for the primary speaker. During the night, Cruz received the assistance of some of his Republican colleagues, who asked lengthy questions in order to let him take a breather. When I went to bed, at about the ten-hour mark, he was busy regaling a largely empty chamber with tales of people losing their health coverage, or their jobs, because of the socialistic disaster that is about to befall the nation. Amid all the doomsaying, selective storytelling, and outright time-fillers, there were some bizarre moments. At about eight o’clock Tuesday night, he read a bedtime story to his young daughters from Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham,” repeating with evident enjoyment the lines, “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam-I-am.” At breakfast time Wednesday morning, he impersonated Darth Vader. At another point, he chided some of his colleagues for having bad haircuts. (He can talk!)

It wasn’t exactly Jimmy Stewart denouncing congressional corruption in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” or even Rand Paul filibustering the confirmation of John Brennan as director of the C.I.A. earlier this year. Cruz doesn’t have the thespian skills of Stewart or the intellectual range of Paul. But what he lacked in depth, he more than made up for in length. At about 3:30 A.M., his speech surpassed in duration Paul’s filibuster. Shortly before 9 A.M., it passed a 1908 attempt by the Wisconsin populist Robert La Follette to filibuster a currency bill, moving Cruz into fourth place on the all-time gabbers list. (Courtesy of The Fix, there are three senators whose filibusters are still longer than Cruz’s speech: Wayne Morse in 1953, at twenty-two hours and twenty-six minutes; Alfonse D’Amato in 1986, at twenty-three hours and thirty minutes; and, atop the list, Strom Thurmond in 1957, at twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes.)

As the hours wore on, Democrats drifted into the chamber. Their appearance afforded the opportunity for some genuine parliamentary-style exchanges and debate, which hitherto had been absent. Picking up on Cruz’s baggage-compartment metaphor, Dick Durbin, the Majority Whip, pointed out that in trying to repeal Obamacare Cruz would deprive tens of millions of uninsured Americans a place anywhere on the plane. He also challenged Cruz to say if he was a participant in the congressional health-care plan he had criticized. Sounding more like the Harvard Law School graduate he is than the Texan straight shooter he often plays on television, Cruz replied cagily, “I am eligible for it, but I am not currently covered.”

By this stage, the forty-two-year-old Texan was finally getting ready to wrap it up. “When I started, I said I intended to stand until I could stand no more,” he said. “Although I am weary, there is still at least strength in my legs to stand a little longer.” Half-heartedly, Cruz asked to be allowed to resume talking after the noon prayer break, but you could tell that he knew the game was up. (In fact, he knew that from the start: procedural rules meant that, no matter what, he had to give up the floor early Wednesday afternoon.)

Contrary to appearances, this wasn’t really a serious effort to shut down the government. As Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed out when he appeared on the floor, it wasn’t, by rule, even a proper filibuster; it was a performance, staged for the benefit of Cruz and the Tea Party, and it was a performance Reid had agreed to, knowing it would only take up one business day of the Senate’s time. And Cruz, like most of his Republican colleagues, must be aware that forcing a government shutdown would be disastrous for the party. To help insure that the spending-authority bill, which Democrats plan to strip of the provisions that defund Obamacare, gets back to the House of Representatives in time for an agreement by the Monday deadline, he suggested that a floor vote be taken on Friday instead of Saturday.

That was nice of him. But then, Cruz is a man with a modest view of his own historical importance. “I want to thank the men and women who have endured this Bataan death march,” he said as noon approached. He went on to mention the Senate’s floor staff, which kept the chamber open throughout the night, his own staff, his Republican colleagues, the Democratic senators who had presided over the chamber in turn, and “the people all across the country who have watched on C-SPAN.” Willfully disregarding the results of two Presidential elections, and repeating something he had already said dozens of times, he went on, “My plea to this body is that we listen to the American people.”

With that, Cruz was finally gone. He was replaced on the floor by the Senate chaplain, who, noting that the chamber had “reverberated with a marathon of speaking,” delivered a prayer asking God to help the members “to clearly discern right from wrong.” Then the lugubrious Reid reappeared. He paid tribute to Cruz for his stamina, and added, “With all due respect, I’m not sure we learned anything new.… For want of a better way of describing it, it’s been a big waste of time.”

For the country, yes. From a legislative perspective, all that Cruz achieved was delaying things by twenty-four hours. Shortly after he finished, the Senate voted to take up the bill and proceed to debate. But despite all the opprobrium heaped upon the Texan, he succeeded in his primary aims: garnering attention, acting out the role of standard-bearer for the enraged Tea Party, and getting under the skin of the Democrats and moderate Republicans. From where he was standing—and for a very long time, at that—it’s a win.

Original Article
Source: newyorker.com
Author: John Cassidy

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