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The "Train Wreck" and Powellmania
In October, the Congress will vote on a new budget, and on the annual raise in the ceiling for the national debt. If either measure fails to pass, the government will run out of money and be forced to shut down.
Mr. Gingrich has threatened a shutdown unless Mr. Clinton agrees to the Republican budget; and Mr. Clinton has threatened to allow Mr. Gingrich to proceed unless the budget is modified.
The press has nicknamed this standoff the "train wreck".
It's no train wreck, it's a game of chicken. There are only two fowl playing: Mr. Gingrich, who controls the votes in Congress, and Mr. Clinton, who has abandoned the left wing remnant of his party in Congress, but retains a veto.
It's too early to tell if the poultry involved is serious, or plans only to strut and cackle until the audience is worn out, and then settle at the last minute.
Mr. Clinton has only two major objections to the Republican proposal: he feels that Medicare spending will slow too fast, and that the tax cuts included are unreasonable. The Republicans are insisting on a fast slowdown because the numbers in their Medicare plan don't add up, and they need big savings for their tax cut.
There is an easy compromise available, in several versions: don't slow Medicare quite so fast, and make future tax cuts contingent on actual progress to a balanced budget.
In another month, about the time this compromise is lost under a mountain of feathers, Colin Powell will reach his self-imposed deadline for a run/no run decision. The General is collecting criticism on grounds that he hasn't told us about his "core beliefs," and that the ones he has told us about (pro abortion, pro gun control, pro affirmative actionÉ) are incompatible with a Republican candidacy.
The nature of everyones's core beliefs and their role in American politics are in for an airing at Halloween.
The two birds on center stage will be preening and pecking, having so much fun in their contrived standoff that they will actually allow the government to shut down for a while. Not long enough to stop social security checks, but long enough to accomplish the first default by the United States Treasury in a couple of hundred years.
And all in the name of "core beliefs." On one side the milk and honey land of tax cuts, prudence and fairness be damned; on the other, the last ride of the unfunded entitlement brigade, the cynical over-promisers of all time.
Sometime soon, somebody is going to ask Colin Powell what he thinks of the chicken proceedings.
Now, I may be carried away by Powellmania, but I have a feeling that Powell will respond along these lines: good government is an objective in itself; we have had too many minority attempts to inflict morality on the majority and on other minorities; and no public servant should posture for political gain in defiance of available compromise.
The financial markets would not be the only parties pleased by core values such as these.
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