Why patriotic Americans should vote Democrat

The Republicans like to bang on about how much they love America, but their actions tell another story. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell let the veil slip last week, telling the National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Jobs, peace, prosperity, America’s future—all can be jettisoned to serve that purely political goal.

Since Obama’s inauguration, the Republicans have managed to be against just about everything the president has proposed. Obama’s health reform policy was a moderate package, one not at all dissimilar to that enacted by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. Did the Republicans thoughtfully consider their president’s plan to tackle what is probably the most pressing long-term fiscal problem facing America? Did they make reasoned and sensible suggestions? No, they just fought him every step of the way and called him a socialist.

If Republicans take control of Congress in this week's elections, expect nothing but obstruction. The good of the nation be damned. And that is the biggest difference between Obama and his opponents. Barack Obama came to office in the midst of the greatest financial calamity of our time. He could have let the banks go bust and blamed the debacle on his predecessor. That is what a demagogue would have done. It would have been popular, politically expedient, and disastrous.

Instead Obama accepted the hand he was dealt, got to work and managed to avoid calamity. His monetary policies saved the financial system from collapse and his fiscal policies kept the recession from mutating into a replay of the great depression. It is unimaginable that the economically illiterate John McCain would have done a better job. We may all quibble with some of Obama’s decisions, but no one can claim that he allowed political considerations to trump the needs of the nation.

Republicans have a long history of putting self-interest ahead of patriotism. Twenty two years ago, I was working as a soundman for NBC News. Our assignment desk sent us to New Jersey to interview an academic who had obtained devastating information from Iranian sources.

The professor told us the following theory. In 1980, the Reagan campaign had desperately feared an “October surprise”—that President Carter would obtain the release of the US embassy hostages in Tehran. This, Reagan's team worried, would surely propel Carter to re-election. So they made a deal with our enemies: in return for holding the hostages until Reagan was in office, the new American administration would supply the Iranians with needed military spare parts. Indeed, the Iranians kept the hostages imprisoned until all of five minutes after Reagan’s inauguration, and American arms flowed surreptitiously to our putative enemies.

Naïve boy that I was, I was shocked. How could anyone conspire to leave our diplomats in captivity for mere political advantage? Reagan campaign official Barbara Honegger was horrified as well. She quit her White House job and wrote a book about the arms for hostages deal, as did National Security Agency officer Gary Sick.

Some further thoughts. In last Friday’s FT, Nouriel Roubini wrote about the economic consequences of a Republican victory. He explained that America needs fiscal stimulus now combined with government entitlement reforms that can secure the nation’s creditworthiness for the future. But a Republican triumph will do nothing but promote more obstructiveness. Stimulus, which is necessary to break the recessionary feedback loop, has become a dirty word. Entitlement reform, which injures various vested interests, cannot happen without bipartisan cooperation. We are facing the worst possible combination of economic policies.

Obama saved America from one disaster. Roubini tells us we heading for another. Most predict the president’s party will be hammered in the polls. Perhaps this is to be expected. The economy in America, as in most of the world, is in a parlous state. Unemployment is high, wages stagnant, growth illusory. In such a situation punishing those in power is natural.

But this time, it would be a mistake. America’s economic travails are not due to the policies of the past two years but rather those of the past 30. Her problems are serious, but solvable. The Republicans, however, will happily accept a darker future for their country as long as it damages the president. They all wear flag pins, but America matters less to them than victory. Maybe I am still naïve, but I think this is shameful. I hope Americans will reward actions rather than rhetoric, and vote Democrat.

Read James Crabtree's report on how the Tea party has uprooted American politics—and Jim Giles on why, if the Tea Party ruled America, it would be just like Las Vegas