IS THE US POLITICALLY UNSTABLE?

We’re losing our ability to lead in the world. The financial crisis caused by greed on Wall Street has hobbled our ability to influence friends and foes. But even more alarming, new questions about the United States are being raised around the world. Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist, reported from the Davos World Economic Forum that he “heard of a phrase being bandied about here by non-Americans — about the United States — that I can honestly say I’ve never heard before: political instability.” Check out the full column, read it here.

Republicans have been more and more captured by the extreme right-wing of their party, and have swung so far right that not only would Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and even Ronald Reagan not recognize their own party, neither would Barry Goldwater, one of the fathers of the Conservative movement.

President Obama came into office offering a bi-partisan approach and his proposed legislation has been mainstream, with many conservative ideas such as tax breaks for small businesses and the middle class. The Democrats have offered a centrist health care plan that is very similar to one offered to the Clinton administration by Republicans in the 1990’s, and is more conservative than the Massachusetts universal healthcare plan enacted by former Republican Governor Mitt Romney. And the Massachusetts universal health care plan even got a “yes” vote from that state’s newly elected Republican Senator, Scott Brown — who was hypocritically supported by the Tea Party that was at the same time calling President Obama a Marxist for supporting a similar plan for the country!

Politics are being played, and there will be serious fall-out for our nation.

In 1974 Richard Nixon offered a more progressive universal health care plan, which even included employer mandates. And yet, the Republican Party has hypocritically screamed “socialism!” about the current health care proposals and made a political calculation to reject every attempt to find middle ground with Democrats. They seem to feel that if they just say no, and demagogue Democratic ideas, that they can whip-up the far right-wing (the same folks who got W. re-elected) and take over Congress in this November’s elections.

What then? Do they have new, 21^st century ideas to solve our enormous problems? Or are they offering the same old ideas that have been tried and disproven? And, we know for sure that when there’s a Republican Congress and a Democratic President that the Republicans will pull out all the stops and go so far as to even look for lame excuses to impeach an American President rather than get serious about solving the country’s problems.

Government is not broken, but our country’s politics is.

The slash-and-burn aggressive tactics of the right are appalling, not only to most mainstream Americans, but are also embarrassingly visible to the rest of the world. Their willingness to use out-and-out lies to whip the passions of concerned Americans into a fear-frenzy, is shocking.

If the Republican Party is not going to step up and help govern the nation (unless they can be in charge) and instead block any action, then we have become a politically unstable country. Our political paralysis, which causes so much uncertainty about how to solve our nation’s huge problems, is casting in us a very questionable light in the world and making the world nervous about the future of America.

Why do we care? The dangerous perception that America is politically unstable will have serious repercussions.

The world will not invest in countries that are politically unstable. It’s not just the residual effects of the financial meltdown that is keeping our country mired in limbo, it’s this political paralysis created by a calculated political decision to “just say no.” The uncertainty that results from this obstructionism is working against our economic recovery and causing the rest of the world to question our stability.

Tom Friedman tells us, “Banks, multinationals and hedge funds often hire foreign policy experts to do ‘political risk analysis’ before they invest in places like, say, Kazakhstan or Argentina. They may soon have to add the United States to their watch lists.”