Andrew Villeneuve’s editorial in your Feb. 19 issue (“Democracy vs. oligarchy: Fight of 2010”) was interesting.

“Nobody is better at political theater than the Republicans”, he says, after quoting President Obama proclaiming an end to “recriminations.” Would President Obama’s blaming President Bush, or the Republicans, for everything be “recriminations” or good “political theater?”

President Obama appointed Timothy Geithner, who owed a large amount of back taxes, as head of the Treasury. That’s like sending the fox to guard the hen house. Sounds like good “political theater” to me.

President Obama generates his own health care bill (which is little changed from the one the Senate generated) and invites the Republicans to a summit where they can come up with a bipartisan bill. He knows they can’t accept it, they already voted against it, but he will accuse them of not cooperating. Great “political theater”!

But the best “political theater” of all, I think, was when the administration took credit for success in Iraq, forgetting to mention the previous administration, and Sen. Obama’s own actions against the war, especially the surge.

I could go on but that should be enough examples. I would like to address the quote from President Obama about an end to “false promises” quoted by Mr. Villeneuve, but that would end up being more examples of “political theater”.

Also in his editorial Mr. Villeneuve says that I-960 “illicitly and undemocratically contravened” our state constitution. If the state constitution allows initiatives, how can an initiative be illicit and undemocratic? Tim Eyman did not pass I-960, the people of Washington did. And now our representatives in Olympia have “illicitly and undemocratically” contravened the will of the people of Washington. They could have cut spending and reduced the scope and size of state government, but they didn’t want to, they were too busy giving things away, especially the Governor who wants to make sure her friends in the public employee’s union don’t feel the recession.

If the Republicans are the party of “no”, as Mr. Villeneuve says, then the Democrats are the party of “yes”. Yes, to raising taxes, yes, to wasting taxpayer money, yes, to making rules that hurt businesses, and yes, to paying off and protecting their buddies.

Besides having the White House, Democrats have had a super majority in the House and the Senate for over a year. The difficulty they had getting their health bill passed was not from the Republicans but from the reluctance of their own Senators as evidenced buy bribes they had to make like the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Compromise (which gave Nebraska the corn and the rest of the states the husk as pointed out by Governor Swartzenager). And Democrats do “comprise a majority” in Olympia, they have for many years. That’s why this state budget is in the shape it’s in.

“Political theater” is an interesting phrase. I like it. It describes much of what is going on in national and state governments nowadays.

– Lynn Seegmiller