COMMENTARY Onward, Through The Fog

LITTLE ROCK — Forecasting political developments is always risky. At this time last year, the nation was basking in the afterglow of the election of Barack Obama.

But 2009 has been a brutal political year and we have found ourselves in an era of foggy ambiguity at a time when many are searching for quick fixes and simple answers.

Karl von Clausewitz, a Prussian military strategist in the 1830s, wrote about the “fog of war,” pointing out that in military operations the battlefield is often obscured by uncertainty and opaqueness, and a level of ambiguity in situational awareness is experienced by those involved. Certainly this applies to our situation in Afghanistan-Pakistan, where President Obama has increased the U.S. role, further injecting this nation into a highly complex cultural-political-military environment.

The Afghanistan escalation and the battle over health-care legislation probably rank as the most consequential actions of the year, although the status of the economy and our budget deficit loomsover everything else.

Fog envelops the domestic political-policy arena as well as the foreign policy realm and in many respects it is a fog of misinformation, made more dense by the lack of transparency and the mindless partisanship in much that has transpired in Washington. The tendency within the media to emphasize score-keeping coverage rather than discerning analysis has also contributed to the abstruse atmosphere.

Two statements exemplify the misinformed and misguided nature of this year’s public dialogue.

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” shouted a participant in a town-hall meeting, oblivious to Medicare’s public essence. Then, a few days ago, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn in the hours leading up to a critical rollcall requiring 60 votes to end a Republican filibuster on the health-care bill said in the Senate, “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.”

Despite the ignoranceand ignominy reflected in those comments, there is no denying that the anger and dismay abroad in the land. The maneuvering and deals in the Senate on the health-care legislation feed that discontent.

And all citizens should be concerned about federal spending and the stupendous deficit and national debt, although some of those now focused on this issue took no apparent notice when massive expenditures were accruing on the Iraq war with almost no accounting.

Likewise, some of those most exercised about the costs of the health-care bill led the way when Congress enacted Medicare prescription drug coverage in 2003 without providing for its significant costs, allegedly to be covered by a budget surplus that was instead eaten up by tax cuts and Iraq war expenditures.

The reality is that we are dealing with complex issues that don’t lend themselves to simple solutions, particularly when politics is factored in, and that’s going to continue to be the case in 2010. To begin with, the Senate and House versions of healthcare legislation must be reconciled if there is to be a final bill, and there’s no guarantee of that. And there will be a continuing blitz of television adsfocused on legislators and the health-care overhaul which further fog the issues. That will be the case in the U.S. Senate race in Arkansas, where we can expect a major effort to unseat Democratic Sen.

Blanche Lincoln, a key figure in the health-care debate.

But we must remind ourselves of the unpredictability of politics and how quickly the atmosphere can change and new issues emerge.

Consider the sudden withdrawal of a strong Republican hopeful, Stanley Reed, from that upcoming Senate race because of health concerns. Or the problems resulting for Mike Huckabee’s future presidential prospects from attention focused on his pattern of favoring clemency for some convicted criminals, spotlighted by the recent killing of four police officers by a man who received clemency from Huckabee nine years ago.

For now, however, it looks like we will be under a continuing dense fog advisory. So our collective new year’s resolution might borrow from that 1960s slogan: Onward through the fog.

HOYT PURVIS IS A JOURNALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS PROFESSOR.