When I was a mayor of Oswego a quarter-century ago, I pushed a very ambitious agenda to reform city government, and to develop the Lake Ontario waterfront. I pushed hard, and I got a lot of push back. One Republican alderman in particular voted no on every single one of my administration's proposals.
I recall one meeting when I interrupted one of his tirades to ask him why he was so consistently negative about everything.
"Negative? Negative?" he retorted. "I'm not negative!"
"And on the motion before the council, how do you vote, Alderman?"
"No!"
"I rest my case!" I responded.
Now it's 2013, and the Republicans in Congress have taken negativity to new heights. And they have done so with impunity because they have insulated themselves into gerrymandered districts from which they virtually can't be removed. At least until now, but there is hope on the horizon.
The "Regressivist Republicans," as former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich calls them, are proposing to shut down the government this fall, in a show of tea party governmental defiance that's likely to be viewed as anarchistic by the vast majority of the sane Republicans and Democrats who simply want progress, and an end to regressive destructionism in government.
If I were President Barack Obama, I would be muttering like Clint Eastwood, "Go ahead. Make my day!"
He can only gain from this kamikaze crazed approach to governance embraced by the insulated Regressivist Republicans in the House, and their allies in the Senate like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who are trying to please the Glenn Beck-Rush Limbaugh-like pontificators to solidify their machismo miens.
I was never a great fan of the President's health care reform proposal. now called Obamacare. I thought there should have been a single-payer system, or at least a modified and expanded, as well as reformed Medicare program. Instead, because of Republican opposition to anything that smacked of socializing our medical delivery system, they went with a version of Romneycare, a Republican think tank sponsored tinkering with the system to modify it to mandate health insurance coverage.
This is an idea that the Republicans have now come to hold in contempt, and keep trying to repeal. It matters not that they have no alternative to replace it.
They have given in to negativity for negativity's sake, and hate has become the haute cuisine of political pandering to the base. Hate Obamacare. Hate immigration reform. Hate increased voting rights acts. Hate marriage equality laws. Hate consumer protection. Hate change. Hate reform.
Hate and negativity are a lethal combination, and in the end, they get you nowhere.
We are fast approaching a boiling point in this campaign of negativity, and the bubble is about to burst. So go ahead Regressivist Republicans, Make our day. Shut things down!
Then maybe even your isolated constituencies will start to show you the door. Then maybe, we can make some progress in solving the critical problems this country faces.
If it's a showdown they are looking for, let it be, and let the chips fall where they may. At least the cow chips that are currently clogging the congressional corridors.
A good house cleaning would be a boon to the country. And then maybe we can put the House of Representatives back in order.
John T. Sullivan Jr. is a frequent Times Union contributor and the former co-chairman of the New York state Democratic Party. His email address isjtsullivanjr@gmail.com.