Recently, the GOP has come out swinging against Democrats on the economy — of all things — hoping to resurrect some kind of cohesive party voice. Basically, they are saying the Democrats aren’t repairing the damage almost 12 years of Republican-controlled Congress, lax oversight and a “business friendly” tax policy fast enough.

Amazing, right?

It takes a demolition crew mere days of planning and seconds of detonations to destroy a complex building such as a bridge. Re-building that bridge is a lengthier, more complex and costly project — especially if your bridge manufacturing team follows safety guidelines to prevent injury and death on the job, has an eye toward the bridge’s longevity and is properly constructing the bridge out of the correct materials. Yet nobody is amazed, or upset, when a new bridge takes months or years to rebuild even though the old one was downed in seconds.

Like a bridge, the economy of any modern nation (let alone the United States) is complex, must be rebuilt with an eye towards longevity and must be reinforced with the right mixture of jobs, employers, and enterprises to avoid another “bubble.”

Perhaps (to take the bridge analogy a bit further) if conservatives were in charge, they might propose removing taxes, reducing the already-laughable legislative oversight and using cheap bubble-ready get-rich-quick schemes to “rebuild the economy.” But, much like our metaphorical bridge, the economy would soon roil and buck worse than before. Something like this:

Better yet, the Republicans — and some “conservative” or “moderate” Democrats — are dragging their heels on energy reform, healthcare reform and a whole host of other messes that need to be straightened out in order to make the nation “successful” again.

Think of it this way: If Obama is the bridge architect then the nay-sayers are the bridge supply manufacturers. Criticizing the slow pace of the recovery while withholding the materials to get the job done is the height of hypocrisy, proving that the “other side” of the aisle cares not one iota about “regular Americans.”

Oh, and how bad is the recession? NBC’s reportage on November 27th noted that “1 in 6 Americans say they don’t have enough to eat.”

And the Democratic-controlled government is in its 11th month on top of it all! If the economy were so easy to fix, even George W could have done it.

The problem lies, in my historically-informed opinion, in America’s almost insatiable need to feel it is #1 in the world. That has blinded it (and its citizens) to the fact that the old way of doing business WILL NOT WORK ANYMORE.

“No need to fix healthcare, it’s the best in the world!” say Glenn Beck and his ilk, totally ignoring the fact that over 60 percent of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills.

“American capitalism and the fundamental of our economy are sound” say McCain and his parrots, completely ignoring the fact that Europe’s more cautious, measured and REGULATED model of capitalism actually created MORE jobs since 2001 than in the US to the tune of about 8 MILLION.

Oh, and all those “socialist” countries? They’ve officially emerged from the recession!

To be fair, the EU’s recovery is uneven, with France, Germany and Great Britain experiencing a much bigger bounce-back than Latvia, Estonia or other Eastern European economies. But still, compared to the conservative agenda, those countries are a whisker away from being communal collectives! Which brings us back to the bridge analogy: Europeans — with all their regulations, environmental agreements and governmental oversight — obviously had the right mechanisms and policies in place to rebuild their collapsed bridge.

So what does that say about America’s “bridge”? Has rampant, unchecked devil-may-care, laissez-faire economics built us a bridge to nowhere? Or is our blindness and stubborn adherence to rhetorical nonsense like being scared of “socialism” made recovery a bridge too far?