Strange Bedfellows.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. I used to have considerable respect for Sen. Lindsey Graham. He seemed to be an independent thinker with some interesting ideas. Now he has become tied to the conspiritorial apron strings of Sen. John McCain. Both are complaining about something that doesn't even matter unless you are a conspiracy buff. Who cares if United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice unwittingly dispensed some inaccurate information about the attack on our Benghazi, Libya embassy? Ambassador Rice was not in charge of our embassies and could not be presumed to have the latest information on the matter. Nor could it have any effect on the fate of the embassy personnel. She was not the right person to ask in the first place. How does that make her a poor candidate to be our next Secretary of State?

Then there is the Simpson-Bowles plan to tackle our national deficit. Erskine Bowles was former Pres. Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff while Alan Simpson was formerly a Republican U.S. Senator from Wyoming. They are working together in the Fix the Debt campaign to push a set of budget cuts and revenue increases that neither party likes very much. It seems unlikely that either Simpson or Bowles would support such a package if they had to do it alone. But together they form a solution that could work if the party leaders would stop tying themselves to the mast of the sinking ship.

The fiscal cliff is the result of a strange cabal of Democratic and Senatorial lawmakers who deliberately  concocted a package of tax increases and budget cuts they thought no one would support. The package was passed precisely because everyone expected it would be cancelled after the elections. But why cancel it? Maybe it will send our economy into a new recession or depression but each side can blame the other for it. For the Democrats it puts in place some tax increases that the Republicans wouldn't touch but for which they are now equally responsible. And for the Republicans it makes some cuts that reduce the size of the federal government and make the tea party happy. After we go over the cliff the Republicans can forcefully propose to restore the tax cuts and the Democrats can loudly try to pass legislation to restore the entitlements that were trimmed. What a wonderful show! So I predict that the two parties, while appearing to search for compromise, will secretly conspire in their efforts to let us fall over the fiscal cliff