The nation and the resulting worlds debt crisis is temporarily over and there are those who say that since both sides hate what transpired, it must be about right. One can look at this situation from an idealistic point of view or from a pragmatic point of view. We have always been pragmatic about so many things, at least as we perceive them to be. And, it is sometimes so often difficult to separate pragmatism from idealism.

President Barack Obama has often stated that he is a pragmatist, and, that pragmatic bent has shown through over not only this crisis, but, so many others that have come his way just as well. It should probably be said here that there is a strong relationship between pragmatism and the traditional compromising politics and governance that we have seen in this nation over so much of its over two hundred year history. Politics is, after all, so often defined as the art of the possible while pragmatism is defined as the art of the practical to determine what ultimate truth may really constitute. Is there any ultimate truth in any of this or is it just a continuum of truths, half truths, temporary truths, and some outright misrepresentations and lies that combine together to bring us to where we are on this mid summer day?

The only real truth that we see here is that we are in a continuing situation that must eventually lead to a conclusion that may not be of any lasting value for anyone involved. Nothing was really solved with any of the histrionics that went on over the last few weeks and months. Speaker of the House John Boehner stated that he got ninety eight percent of what he wanted out of the deal that was so reluctantly struck. If that leaves two percent for the Democrats on the left then there was really no compromise here at all. The Republicans kept coming back to the table with more demands which constantly moved the marker farther and farther in a quicksand pit composed mainly of people who would not hesitate to destroy the country in their desire to save it from itself, or, so they would like us to believe them anyway. The rational on the right seemed to be that the consistent adding onto of debt was going to eventually bring the nation to the breaking point so why not take this supposed golden opportunity to do so right now. One essential truth out of all of this is the fact that this nation is worse off from this debt crisis--totally politically manufactured by the right--than it would have been if it had not occurred at all. The only thing that the tea party brings to the table is the fact that we must deal with our debt. Doing that by signing a cultish pledge to never raise taxes is what makes not only the tea party but most republicans into what we have so aptly described as a cult like being.

We suppose that there is blame to be distributed on both sides. However, one of the main talking points made by Barack Obama’s fellow liberals really holds no weight at all. The liberals state that Obama should have used some sort of constitutional device such as the clause in the fourteen amendment which says that the United States government debt should never be held in question. The fourteenth amendment was enacted shortly after the American Civil war and has very little to do with the debate that we hold today. However, more importantly than that, if President Obama had involked the fourteenth amendment, what benefit would the nation have gotten in the form of deficit reform? Simply raising the debt ceiling would have merely kicked the can further down the road, increased the debt some more, and made the problem even more binding. Some on the left have also stated that Obama should have passed the debt ceiling extension last December while he still had a majority left in the lame duck congress that has been replaced by the current Republican/Tea Party led coalition. This would have simply done nothing about deficit reduction while giving even more credence to the Republican/Tea Party argument that President Obama’s “blank check� should be taken away as they have so regularly done as of late with their Citizens United Supreme Court decision enabled corporate unlimited money flow ads.

Barack Obama stated throughout this debate that there was a window of opportunity to pass a “grant bargain� consisting of around five trillion of combined reductions in spending and an enhanced tax increase that would place that nation on a more favorable footing for the future and with the debt rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s. This idea reflected the idealism present in a president who has stated that he is a pragmatist and what we ended up getting reflects that set of realities, as grim as they might be, of the current day. What we really have are the remains of the day. For those who do not know what that means, it comes from a film released in the nineteen nineties from which this piece takes its title where two employees of a household, one a man and one a woman, serve a master who is truly idealistic and would have taken England on a very pacifistic road of compromise with Adolf Hitler before the Second World War. Later, after the war ends and a new owner takes over the manor, they serve a different sort of employer. However, they are mainly loyal to the manor and whomever might be in charge. The head butler gets an opportunity to go be with the loyal maid that has served with him throughout his life and become her husband. In one of the most tragic, poignant and touching scenes ever seen in any film, he simply thanks her for her offer and chooses the manor and its current owner as he watches what might have been such a good life drive down the road and out of his existence.

People and nations make such choices!

We live in a democracy here in the United States, such as it is. It is an old democracy as democracies go. We can blame whomever we like for what that current situation is. However, we are all in this together and whatever the eventual outcome is, rich and poor alike are going to suffer equally in the end. When you have never had anything, you really have little to lose. But, when you have had practically everything that is materialistically available to you upon this earth, you have so much further to fall and so much more to be so bitter about losing. Barack Obama has had the presidency of the United States for a time, and, all that he can really suffer is the bitterness that might come from not being reelected. As with Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, however, that bitterness recedes after a period of time. Barack Obama has done the very best that he could do given the circumstances that he has been placed into, not particularly for conservatives, and not for liberals either. But for the future of this nation that he has been given the privilege to serve in such a dramatic way. He came into the presidency preaching hope like a southern or black fundamentalist minister and he encountered those who have treated hope and those who would have the audacity to even mention it in the worst possible way. He has been fought tooth and nail and hated by those that history will remember in the worst possible way. And, as the positive future recedes down the road and we are left with the manor house that we have so horribly constructed for ourselves, we really have no one else to blame but ourselves for what we have done. Barack Obama will recede into history and we will be left to face the future that we have constructed for ourselves because that is all that we will have remaining to us from this day and for so many days before it and those left to come. And, we will not soon see again an individual such as President Obama who chose the manor house over his own personal pleasures. We saw a president in George W. Bush who listened to the cultish whispers of those who would have constructed an American empire, and, who led to the precipice that we find ourselves in by doubling the national debt in only eight years. And only the Lord knows what we may face with the person who would succeed president Obama. That person cannot run on the hope campaign that Obama ran on for so many obvious reasons. They will have to run on a campaign of change. As we so often have seen, change is not always progress and so much of it is usually not. And we wonder what that new person may do in the darkest hours that most presidents find themselves confronting. Will they walk the halls of the White House and look quietly and alone at the pictures of those who have come before them? The presidency is so often a very lonely job and isolation is always an ever present companion. Will the new leader seek out the best advice that they can find, or, will they to listen to the whispers that may end up ending this fine old democracy as it withers in its death knells? Those seductive whispers are things such as “no new taxes� and “a very small and limited government�, all code words for things like no regulation and the ever present possibility of the law of the social and economic jungle.

We do not get presidencies like Barack Obama’s very often, with the ever present profile in courage that he has afforded all of us the right to behold. He fights for the future and the elusive middle ground that holds all democracies together. But, he cannot fight that battle alone and we are running out of time to realize that fact. And, that is why the presidency is such a very lonely job and he beholds the grim realities of too many days and their remains. Presidents and presidencies never really die. They leave something of themselves as a mark on the country for all time to come. And, they are reminders of the good and the bad in all of us. No one knows who the last American president might be. However, as we look around us at all of the bitterness, polarization, and rancor, we cannot help but think that it might not be all that far away.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.