Recent experiences reporting in Washington leave me with the uneasy feeling that some pretty influential Dems have grand plans for their own careers, but don't really care about what happens to the rest of us after the 2008 election. Of course, the GOP has nothing to offer beyond 2008 but 1909, so it's not much of a choice.
Democrats have been exploring ambitious grand agendas in Congress and on the think tank circuit. Yet when it comes to pass legislation the results are iffy: witness five months to pass a no-brainer like the first minimum wage increase in a decade and still counting on the time it will take them to show some spine on Iraq.
If you're anywhere on the inside-the-Beltway policy scene, you get to see among the Dems a lot of slap-happy politicoes who are feeling that come 2008 they'll once again have august titles in the executive branch and work in Federal style buildings with huge rococo windows behind them. Yet asked pesky pertinent questions about real human needs, they don't seem to have given them much thought.
The hundreds of millions that will be wasted on the coming presidential campaign is shaping up to be about jump-starting the careers of Dems and sending the Repubs back to trading bonds in Gucciland.
The reporting on which these feelings are based hasn't yet seen the copyrighted light of day, thus I can't discuss specifics. Even then, I make my living as a journalist, not pundit. Yet speaking from deep in my heart of hearts, I am getting uneasy with the way things are going.
2008 threatens to become the rise of the Republicrats.
