Blankley: Governing while drunk on partisanship

NewsNM: Swickard - Tony Blankley passed away a week ago after a long battle with cancer. He will be missed. This is from April 2011 From the Washington Times - by Tony Blankley - If future historians look back on the ruins of the American economy after a U.S. bond crisis struck in the second decade of the 21st century, many causes will be noted. Obviously, it will be seen that for decades before the catastrophe, the United States was spending vastly more than it could afford on government health and retirement programs. Just as after the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, 2011, blue-ribbon commissions will be incredulous that all the telltale signs of the coming disaster were in plain view yet were ignored. But the central indictment for the catastrophe that ended American prosperity and world dominance will be justly laid at the feet of those Washington politicians who continued to play for short-term partisan advantage even as the economic earth was beginning to move under their feet. Of course, it may be claimed in partial mitigation of their guilt that the politicians, like the witch in Goethe’s Faust, had become acclimated to the noxious brew: “Here I have a bottle, From which, at times, I wet my throttle; which now, not in the slightest, stinks.” But the cup of Washington partisan politics is raising a higher and higher stink amongst the public. And if the crisis comes while some Washington politicians continue to get drunk on their business-as-usual brew, the public is likely to choke on the defense of “governing while drunk on partisanship.” Read more

Blankley: Governing while drunk on partisanship