Pilots like to have a good weather forecast, and if I were to offer one to my aviation colleagues about the political weather we face in the next twelve months, it wouldn’t be pretty. America’s aviation industry hasn’t seen much sunshine in recent years and whenever our mood starts to brighten, along comes another wet blanket from the White House like their renewed campaign to vilify corporate aviation, impose user fees, overhaul aircraft depreciation schedules, and raise taxes on business owners or families earning over $250,000 a year. If they keep this up, I may start to get really angry.
Perhaps we can be consoled with the thought that it is all mere politics – and lately we’ve come to expect this kind of populist class warfare as a supposedly harmless feature of presidential election campaigns. But this time I’m more than a little worried. The coming election cycle is not your ordinary struggle between two parties fighting for votes from undecided voters in the middle, each therefore trying to sound reasonable to centrist voters. 2012 is shaping up more like those bloody infantry battles of yore (think Waterloo or Gettysburg) where there aren’t many “undecideds” on the battlefield, and neither side sees a path to victory through compromise or conciliation.
The Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz lamented that the outcomes of great battles were much less predictable than military strategists might expect because of something he called “the fog of war” – an uncertainty that arises from the chaos, confusion, and strategic vagueness of intense military confrontation. If current trends continue, the 2012 election will be a climactic political battle with enough chaos, confusion, and strategic vagueness to cover the electoral landscape with zero visibility and indefinite ceilings for months.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. After 33 months, the economic and political agenda of the Obama administration is much clearer than it was in the warm and fuzzy days of the 2008 election. Their support for Keynesian spending and ‘stimulus’ programs continues unabated, despite dubious results. Their fealty to the agenda of powerful unions is steadfast, whatever the cost to the public purse. Their antipathy to private businesses is reflected in their rhetoric and their tax and regulatory proposals. Their faith in government’s ability to choose winners in the private economy, from healthcare to solar energy to high-speed rail, is undiminished. And their criticism of “the rich” is a never-ending torrent.
Republicans have a starkly different vision of cutting the size of the federal government: dramatically restructuring the tax code, defunding public unions, creating a national energy policy (God forbid), slashing spending, and establishing a predictable and stable regulatory, fiscal, and monetary environment so that businesses can reduce the government-induced uncertainties that confound them today. On these issues there is consensus, but on a range of other issues, from immigration to globalization, they find lots to debate. Still, on one thing they all agree: the curtain must fall next year on the Obama administration and all it stands for.
Thus, the two sides are more polarized than I’ve seen in over 40 years of watching politics. It is, as they say, a watershed year, and after a hurricane and an earthquake in Washington in recent months, I’m battening down the hatches for one heck of a storm next year.
Despite the fog, there are some apparent trends that are likely to continue and give rise to some cautious predictions. First, republicans are, at this point, not only encouraged by polls but also by the evidence that their hard-core voters are more energized than they’ve been in decades. The democratic base is diminished, somewhat disaffected, and deeply discouraged by the continuing high unemployment. Also, important democratic constituencies, e.g. Hispanics, may drift away, especially if the republicans put someone like Senator Marco Rubio on the ticket.
In addition, the opening line-up for next year’s Senate races heavily favors the republicans (they are defending only 10 of the 33 seats at stake in 2012). Although “none of the above” would win most Congressional elections if it were on the ballot, the “throw the bums out” mentality on Election Day should help republicans win control of the Senate, even if it slightly reduces their majority in the House.
But many questions remain and the fog continues to roll in to cloud our view of the horizon:
Will republicans nominate a presidential candidate that won’t offend centrists (and will that matter as much this year)?
Will class warfare rhetoric and economic envy mobilize Obama’s base?
Are the millions of Americans (nearly 50%) who receive government checks automatically voting for big government, even if it’s bankrupt?
Do the unemployed blame government or Wall Street for our economic difficulties?
Will the various divisions within the republican party all support a single (perhaps imperfect) candidate?
Will seniors punish republicans because they dared to suggest that entitlements like Medicare need to be reformed?
Will democrats be able, in the weeks before the election, to create an issue that distracts the voters’ attention from the dismal economy?
If the election were held today, the democrats would suffer their worst electoral defeat in decades, and time is quickly running out for the administration and its allies in the Senate to persuade voters that they deserve another chance. There’s always a possibility that some unforeseen event will give them a ray of sunshine to brighten their prospects, but at this point my weather forecast, even with all the fog, favors the GOP. If they are victorious, the bigger question is: Can they govern according to their conservative principles or will they succumb once again to the pandering appeasement that marked their most recent period of political power? This may be their best (or last) chance to shine.
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