After shelling out the lion's share of $2.8 billion for national humiliation, Congressional Republicans are finally on the couch, having also paid for what amounts to the most expensive psychoanalysis in history. They haven't yet reached the final, acceptance stage of grief, but most have definitely passed denial. They now seem to be swimming in agonized circles of anger, bargaining and depression.
To prevent a natural slide into suicidal rage, they are first trying to see some good side of their past behavior. "Together, we reformed welfare. We cut taxes, and small businesses grew all over the nation," gloated Dennis Hastert. (You remember him.) "We promised to protect this nation from further attack, and by grace of God and with the leadership of President Bush, we have been successful."
What he didn't say is that the welfare-reformed poverty rate has skyrocketed, their tax-cutting deficit is a shameful time bomb waiting to blow up in our faces, and small businesses are growing all over the world, quite without Republican assistance, thank you.
As for their support of Bush's leadership and that combination being responsible for protecting the country from "further attack"? Well, a year ago I started wearing an amulet designed to ward off Siberian tigers. And I've concluded it is singularly responsible for my not seeing a Siberian tiger in my neighbor since.
But to their credit, Republicans are also experimenting with some heaping doses of authentic self-examination. More than a few have walked right up to the postmortem edge of that horrible thing -- the Truth of the matter.
"You know, the American people took the reins of government away from the Republican Party ... in this last election. They did so, I think, in large part because they were tired of our hypocrisy," said recovering Sen. Judd Gregg.
"Our leadership and some of our members grew arrogant in their own power, and with arrogance comes corruption," Rep. Zach Wamp added philosophically. "If Tom DeLay said it one time, he said it 15 times: 'The most important thing we can do for the American people is keep our Republican majority.' That was just wrong, and it had to catch up to us in the end." Wamp's count was surely off, but his enlightenment was right on.
Of the three quoted, only Sen. John McCain appears stuck in denial: "We came to change Washington, and Washington changed us." Taking the passive route of victimization, McCain seems to believe that Congressional folks somehow, in some sort of out-of-body experience, check their free will at the House and Senate doors, there to be left at the mercy of external D.C. winds.
Whether McCain actually believes this hogwash is unimportant. The way he's callously racing to the right in pursuit of cherished primary voters even farther to the right casts doubt on it, but that's the exclusive cerebral territory of the senator and his conscience.
What is important is that Democrats choose not to believe it -- that the incoming powers reject the tempting conviction that Congressional politics possesses its own controlling spirit. It does only if you let it.
So far, however, there are few hopeful signs that Democrats intend to control their own destiny and every indication that in two years or twelve, they too will be on the couch, wondering where in hell they went wrong. Yet any disempowered layman could make the call now.
The dagger in Republicans' heart was, in a word, money. They didn't control it; those who had it to give, did. The plutocratic string pullers funneled the cash and wrote the legislation -- and every drop and scrap of it was in direct opposition to what the vast majority of the electorate wanted, or needed. The cash recipients finally paid the price.
Unfortunately, Democrats have dangled no hope that they intend to turn off the faucet. Lobbyist bribing parties are in full force, racking up Democratic IOUs. The PAC-cash dispensers are pondering protective legislation. The forces of monied special interest are still in charge.
Yet the Democratic leadership has proposed not one serious effort to dam the flow of antisocial, anti-public-interest money. Because they're tempted to believe, as McCain apparently does, that some disembodied spirit of Washington works its own will, Democrats, finally in power and desperate to hang on to it, will soon sell out and brazenly do the legislative bidding of special interests. In time, the public will notice; in time, Democrats will pay the price.
It's hard to watch an incoming party of "change" speed toward a cliff and wonder why it can't see the self-created danger ahead.