Texas Blue Mailbag: Week of July 8, 2007

We received a lot of great issues questions for this week's Mailbag, ranging from the recent student loan bill to the war in Iraq to calls for impeachment and the response of congressional Democrats.

Chris asks:

What do you guys think of the new student loan bill?

Josh says:

As a college graduate and a product of the ten years where student lenders treated their industry like the Wild West, I have to say I'm glad that the programs are getting more reasonable but that I wish they would now do something retroactive. That's totally a self-interest analysis, though. I am totally in favor of anything that makes it easier for people to get to college, and I think the Pell Grant increases will be a huge help. I also think the grumbling from Sallie Mae was shameless. Legislatively, it is bills like this that make the differences between Democrats and Republicans the most clear — I'm of the opinion that the interest rate increases produced by the Republican majority were little more than class warfare.

Neil wonders:

Does the Bush administration think it won't come out they censor scientists that work for them, like what happened again this last week with the former Surgeon General?

George answers:

Sorry, you're asking the wrong George. If I had the ability to read that guy's mind, I could make a mint. Rummy got canned, yet Gonzo's still in? What'd the street have those odds at?

But seriously, the bit on the Surgeon General being pressured to produce certain answers isn't exactly a surprising bit of news. We've heard much the same regarding the administration pushing towards certain "right" answers from climate scientists as well, not to mention those outside the scientific world altogether. I imagine they must know that, given the current political climate, any of that sort of thing that hasn't come out yet is bound to come out eventually. I think the more salient question is: will they ever care?

Elizabeth queries:

wtf we gonna dew when Iraq blows up in our faces and the Democratic party gets the blame because we're the ones in power?

Josh answers:

I don't think Democrats are condemned to shouldering the blame for how Iraq turns out, or at least not by default. I think Democrats could easily end up taking the rap for Iraq if they don't do anything about it, but it is a tough row to hoe. The Democratic majority in the Senate is just barely a majority, making it difficult to get anything done. Anything that would be passable in that chamber would likely disagree with whatever action the House advocates since they have more room within which to work. Some sort of compromise would have to be hammered out, just like anything in politics, but that compromise is unlikely to look like something the American people would be really happy with.

It is hard because there is no right answer. There's no way for everyone to roll double sixes and have everything fixed in any kind of expedient way. Any solution to the current problem most Americans have with Iraq — that we're there in the first place — won't change the fact that Iraq is going to be messed up for decades. The entire paradigm of thinking about Iraq is going to have to shift to thinking about it like a human rights concern, similar to Darfur, which is an unhappy but incontrovertible truth.

That doesn't answer the question, but I think pariah status can be avoided by doing something. Any course of action different than the current one with a mind to responsible foreign policy will be an improvement.

Tod ponders:

Why does the congressional democratic leadership continue to insist that impeachment is off the table, despite continuing evidence of illegal and deceptive behavior by the administration? While impeachment may never be a foregone conclusion, to rule it out in effect gives a carte blanche to the executive branch, and is another example of congress shirking a fundamental, and perhaps it's only real, oversight of the executive branch. Why do they do this?

George replies:

You know, Tod, I'm glad you ask. I don't think I've heard any of the Democratic congressional leadership say that impeachment is "off the table" since shortly after the November '06 elections. Granted, Obama came out a little over a week ago and said that he didn't think impeachment was a good idea, but he's not the voice of the whole Democratic caucus, and I can't help but think some of them are listening to what some in their constituency are saying as far as that goes.

But that question touches on a number of other subjects which I think may be just as pressing. There are reasons why we wouldn't want to impeach, including that impeaching throws out our greatest advantage in the 2008 elections, and that perhaps we don't want to support the Republican take on impeachment for anything other than an absolute, no-questions, hands-down, direct affront to the fundamental functioning of the democratic process lest we look like we're just going for retribution — and though that case against Bush is building, it is not yet built to the point where a jaded observer (as much of America is) wouldn't just see partisan revenge. I can't help but think that the argument that there's simply not enough time to do it right, when we should be focusing on the current election cycle, has a lot of merit.

But above all, the biggest issue I see when talking about impeachment is much the same as the biggest issue I see when talking about the conflict in Iraq: what on earth are Democrats thinking when they label as a failure Congress' attempts to enforce the mandate they were given? It's been eight months, for goodness' sake! When a largely incumbent Democratic Congress in 1970 first tried to limit Nixon's expansion of Vietnam by an amendment prohibiting his announced expansion into Cambodia, at a time when public opinion was solidly against continued involvement in Vietnam, it still took three years and the War Powers Act to actually start getting troops out of there. (Which the Supreme Court weakened in '83, may I add.) Giving a brand-new leadership eight months to do something similar and then declaring them "failures" is not just foolish, it hurts the very cause we're trying to promote. Yet I see many both in the mainstream media and on the Internet doing precisely that.

It seems at times that the "I want what I want, and I want it now!" mindset that has invaded much of American life has been just as active in politics. We saw it in the response of some Texas Democrats to the 2006 elections in the state, claiming that the level of success that we saw, which we hadn't seen in decades, somehow "wasn't enough;" we've seen it in the past few months regarding Congress' attempts to bring troops home, where after only the first real push to do so, too many people were willing to declare the Democratic Congress a "failure," despite the fact that the process of getting the bipartisan Congressional support to get the troops home has been showing regular and continuous gains; and we're starting to see it again with hasty calls to impeach the President, Vice President, Attorney General, and pretty much anybody else we can get our hands on, and complaints when it doesn't happen within the week. I'm not shy about sticking my neck out, and I'll willingly do it now: I don't like it. I think it's foolhardy, and I think it hurts our cause both in the short and the long run. If Democrats won't support Democrats, why would the 30% of America that is independent and will determine the results of the next election? The Republicans' party discipline is finally starting to unfold, and they are beginning to eat their young. Just because we have a long history of foolishly doing the same doesn't justify that behavior, especially now.