With These Republicans, America Is Finished

Consider this sentence: “Barack Obama can make the call to kill bin Laden, but lacks the power to modernize the railway network.” The absurdity is pointed out by Sylvie Kauffmann, in an article that Le Monde has republished in a magazine entitled “Obama’s America.”

This is a perfect example of how the power of the American president is felt all throughout the world, but falters inside his own borders, because Republicans keep boycotting his initiatives. If Congressman Allen West accuses the Democrat of imitating the Soviet Union, others feed conspiracy theories that declare Obama a communist agent or, due to his Kenyan father, a crypto-Muslim.

The analysis made by the ex-managing editor of Le Monde is based upon her experience in New York and Washington. And seeing as she was, previously, a correspondent in the Soviet Union, it is significant that she identifies the problems in the United States not as socialist leanings, but as right-wing fundamentalism. In its wrath against government, the most conservative wing of the Republican Party vehemently opposes any investment in roads or railways, schools or hospitals, medical research or in the fight against global warming, but becomes as quiet as mice when military spending is brought up. It finds itself equally mute in the face of rising inequality. In 1970, a manager’s income was 40 times greater than the income of your average worker. As Kauffman points out, that income disparity has increased by a factor of 10 — managerial incomes are now 400 times greater than worker incomes.

Credit should be given to what the French have to say about America: French General Lafayette did help George Washington seize independence from the British after all; and Tocqueville was the first to explain the new country, in his “Democracy in America.”

There’s a certain decline which — they emphasize — is the fault of others. China’s rise will, by itself, bring about the end of the United States as the foremost economic world power within a decade. But America can still count on the dollar’s prestige, the best universities can still be found within its borders and, as Apple shows us, the U.S.’s inventive spirit is unbeatable. The French also acknowledge cultural diversity as a trump card.

What, then, is failing in America? The answer is: the Republican Party, which no longer bears any resemblance to the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt or Bush, Senior. Moderates, such as Senator Olympia Snowe, are harassed. From over 200 of the party’s congressmen, only Joseph Cao voted in favor of the healthcare reform bill proposed by Obama. And Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts anticipated the President’s ideas, promises to repeal all of it if he wins the White House on Nov. 6.

The Republican candidate is indefensible. He was a Mormon missionary in France, and he might even read Le Monde, but he betrayed his past as an enlightened conservative to please those who, during the years of Bush, Junior, were upset by French criticism of the invasion of Iraq and rechristened “French fries” as “freedom fries.”

If things keep going this way, America is done for.