If there’s one thing we can reliably count on from the new year, it is that some cable news network will produce a nifty Decision 2012 logo for the coming election season.
And, yes, Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” will put up its own version of Indecision 2012. But this once, the cable news guys should be right.
We spent most of 2011 watching Washington playing ugly games of brinkmanship. The year-long string of so-called crises has simply highlighted the fact that Washington politics is in a state of disrepair. In fact, the year ended with House Republicans having to backtrack on cutting payroll taxes. It was a little too Scrooge-like even for this Congress.
You can rightly blame the players. And Sen. Michael Bennet has had a great time with his oft-replicated chart showing all the institutions and people more popular than Congress, starting with the IRS and concluding with Hugo Chavez.
But there are, in fact, fundamental difference between the parties, and elections are the best way we have of resolving them. The bad news is that the elections don’t come until November, meaning we may be facing 11 more months of political paralysis.
Still, some things must be addressed. We start with the supercommittee’s failure. As it stands now, there will be $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts, half coming from the Pentagon and half from discretionary spending. We doubt the cuts will ever go into effect as written, but the thing to remember is that nothing happens until a year from now, on Jan. 1, 2013. And that, of course, is not until after the November elections.
We also need to resolve the issue of the Bush tax cuts, particularly as they pertain to the wealthy. Should those cuts disappear for income over $250,000, or $1 million, or not at all?
But take a guess as to when the Bush tax-cuts extension expires. That’s right: In December 2012. Again, the date mysteriously falls after the November election.
The one issue that won’t wait until November is the Affordable Care Act, which will be heard before the Supreme Court this spring and probably decided during the summer. But don’t be surprised if the court strikes down one or more parts of the law while leaving most of it intact.
The outcomes of the likely biggest stories of 2012 are particularly difficult to predict: the fate of the Arab Spring in the Middle East, the fate of the economy in the Eurozone, the fates of TABOR and Lobato in Colorado courtrooms, the fate of Tim Tebow on the field (which could be decided as soon as Sunday).
But come November, the issues finally fall to us, the voters, which doesn’t mean anything will be resolved then either. We don’t like dysfunctional government, of course, but we do seem to have greater faith in split government.
What we do know is the presidential campaign will dwarf everything, at least until the predicted end of the world arrives — which, if the Mayan “long count” calendar people have it right, would hit on Dec. 21. Yeah, after the elections. And, worse, after we’ve already sat through a painfully full calendar of TV campaign ads.
