http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/05/26/obama-and-hagel/ n. the principle of good order<br /><br /> "Observe the strange inversion of all order and sense! Dignity debased; how vilely is the function of a consul prostituted!" ~The Craftsman Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:02:13 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.3 hourly 1 http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/05/26/obama-and-hagel/comment-page-1/#comment-11076 John Mon, 26 May 2008 17:41:19 +0000 http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/05/26/obama-and-hagel/#comment-11076 It really is hysterical - or would be hysterical, if it weren't so scarily indicative of the state of our politics - to see someone like Sullivan championing the Obama-Hagel and McCain-Lieberman tickets as "post-partisan". (Talk of "centrism" is a bit better, but that just goes to show the strange limits of our political possibilities.) Either of these pairings would be the perfect triumph of a phenomenon you have noted again and again: the ability of our political parties to use the pretense of real disagreement simply to cement in place a political establishment that, because no one is able to put any real electoral pressure on it, need have absolutely no regard for the needs of the populace. That there is serious talk of cross-partisan presidential tickets in an election year so supposedly "polarized" as this one says all that needs to be said about the lack of any real difference between the GOP and the Dems. This is not to say that an Obama-Hagel ticket wouldn't be different from a McCain-Lieberman one - of course it would, and it would be better! - but just that the impossibility of standing up and mounting a serious and successful challenge to the system could not be proven any better. It really is hysterical – or would be hysterical, if it weren’t so scarily indicative of the state of our politics – to see someone like Sullivan championing the Obama-Hagel and McCain-Lieberman tickets as “post-partisan”. (Talk of “centrism” is a bit better, but that just goes to show the strange limits of our political possibilities.) Either of these pairings would be the perfect triumph of a phenomenon you have noted again and again: the ability of our political parties to use the pretense of real disagreement simply to cement in place a political establishment that, because no one is able to put any real electoral pressure on it, need have absolutely no regard for the needs of the populace. That there is serious talk of cross-partisan presidential tickets in an election year so supposedly “polarized” as this one says all that needs to be said about the lack of any real difference between the GOP and the Dems. This is not to say that an Obama-Hagel ticket wouldn’t be different from a McCain-Lieberman one – of course it would, and it would be better! – but just that the impossibility of standing up and mounting a serious and successful challenge to the system could not be proven any better.

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