Tag Archives: politics
On a Future State:Radio Essay for June 29, 2013
When it comes to Republican politics, it is generally acknowledged that Massachusetts is a little lopsided. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a factor of 3:1. Historically speaking, Republicans have not fared well in elections held in Massachusetts. According to recent analysis, the Republicans sport a worse win-lose record over the last decade than the ‘62 Mets.
True conservatives within the Republican Party fare even worse. There is the occasional Governor, to be sure, but none in recent years have been beacons of conservative thought. The Constitutional Offices of Secretary of State, Auditor and Treasurer have long been in the hands of the Democrats. And, really, there is no such thing as a “conservative Democrat” in Massachusetts. By any national standard, most of our “conservative Republicans” could qualify as card carrying members of the other side in States such as Texas.
Still, whenever a solid Republican candidate is fielded they seem to capture about 43% of the vote. In the recent special election for US Senate, Gabriel Gomez actually received 45%. Was that because of a poor turnout or did the campaign actually reach a few more voters.
Gomez did better in some cities than did Scott Brown last time out. Brown got smoked almost 3:1 in Springfield, for instance; Gomez lost by a factor of 2:1. Progress?
For all of the hype about “The New Republican” Gomez claimed to be; the fact that he beseeched Governor Duval Patrick to be the choice for interim Senator; the fact that he repudiated Republican positions on Gun Control, immigration reform and abortion; and, the fact that Gomez was a first generation American of Columbian parents who did not speak English until 5 years old. The numbers tell us that it may have shaken loose only 2% more votes. Did I mention that he was a Navy SEAL?
The problem was less that Gomez was running on a resume that did not include political experience; many people pine for that. The problem was that he was running without political positions that would distinguish him from the opponent. This was an issueless campaign so why not vote for the guy who you count upon to be a hard core liberal who will deliver on every vote rather than a soft core liberal who might surprise you when predictability counts?
We are in the fifth year of the Great Recession. We have not even recovered the lost jobs from 2008-2009 no less created opportunity at the rate of 125,000 jobs per month necessary to sustain our economy. Our foreign policy is in shambles. The Middle East is on fire and the administration, with the complicity of some Republican Senators, pours fire on the situation by arming rebels who have no love of the United States. Vladimir Putin lectures us on world affairs and outmaneuvers us in the United Nations.
So what do we talk about in The Great Senate Special Election? Toilet bowls, absentee representation, reaching across the aisle to be more catholic than the Pope and arithmetic rather than math. We deserved a better campaign.
The problems with the Gomez campaign belie the fact that the major political parties are in cahoots. They exist to preserve the status quo. Discussing the size of government is like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. When the music stops, all that matters is that there is a narrative that the players can manipulate to their advantage so as to maintain their seat.
Is being a Member of Congress so satisfying that a person wishes to do it for 30 or 40 years? Or even more? I think that the satisfaction of the role ultimately becomes secondary to the power that it brings, to the egotistical nature of the incumbency. Humans have a preservation instinct and politicians have a highly refined sense of self preservation.
So where does that leave us poor constituents? What are we to do in a world where left and right collude to find a good ‘ol boy (and girl) network of back slapping colleagues who pontificate and bellow but who really don’t stand for anything? Anything except reelection, that is.
We know what the answer is. We have seen this coming for a long time. We have seen it at least since the advent of the Tea Party. Since the beginning of a group of people whose only ambition was to ask the one simple question, “Why?” And one more follow on, “Please explain this to me.” And what we have gotten from our efforts is to be vilified and investigated and instigated and infiltrated and demeaned and demonized.
The Democrats cannot have us and the Republicans will not have us. The time for a third party is upon us now. I fear it may well be too late.
Press on.
Filed under Essay
On the Blame Game: Essay for June 30, 2012
Oh my, is there ever lots of gnashing of teeth going on over the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. There is a lot of name calling, too. After all, someone must be to blame for this horrible act.
Is it Chief Justice Roberts? He is the conservative who voted with the liberal side of the court tilting the balance to the left. He could have used his vote to end the entire matter of Obamacare once and for all. He did not. Roberts: guilty!
Then there is the grand perpetrator himself, President Obama. Wasn’t this his idea to begin with? He spent his first 14 months in office cramming this package down our throats. We did not want it and he would not listen to our clamor. Obama: guilty!
What about former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? Was there ever a bigger cheerleader for this monstrosity of legislation than her? Remember how she told us that we would have to pass the bill first so that we could find out what’s in it? Well, we certainly know now. Pelosi: guilty!
How about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? Remember how he would not even let the bill go through a conference process? That effectively neutered the role of newly elected Senator Scott Brown from weighing in as the 41st vote. Reed: guilty!
No conversation about blame for any unfortunate outcome of the Obama Administration would be complete without the mention of former President George W. Bush. Surely there is some sort of blood on his hands. Nonsense, you say? Let’s look at some facts.
While George Bush was eking out the 2000 elections with the thinnest of electoral margins, the House and Senate were under slight Republican control. In the painful wake of the 9/11 attacks, the 2002 midterms improved the Republican House margin by 8 seats. By 2004 we were involved in two wars. Bush carried 31 States and the Republicans expanded control of the House by 3 more seats and the Senate by 4. Bush now enjoyed some comfortable legislative margins on top of his reelection. But the years between 2004 and 2006 were not kind to Republicans. The wars lingered and casualties mounted. Deficit spending was increasing. Government expansion surpassed that of his Democratic predecessors.
The mid-term elections of 2006 swung the House decisively into Democrat hands as they picked up 31 seats. The Senate lurched into effective Democratic control by a slim majority. Bush: guilty!
The rise of hope and change took America by storm in 2008 and led to a clean Democrat sweep into power by very effective margins in both chambers of Congress. The Republicans lost 20 seats in the House and 7 seats in the Senate.
Emboldened by raw power and a perceived mandate of the people for change, the Reed-Pelosi juggernaut got moving and it did not stop until the final, cowardly vote was taken to pass the Affordable Care Act by the very slimmest of margins without a single Republican vote. Not a single Republican vote.
Where had all of the Republicans gone? They were voted out and almost into extinction. Heretofore, legislation of this magnitude always involved a bipartisan compromise. But there was no need to compromise with the minority party so long as there were enough votes to pass. The Republicans were hoisted on their own petard as our Constitutional Republic spoke.
Ironically, the dastardly doings of the Obama-Reed-Pelosi triumvirate would be their undoing come the 2010 elections when Republicans erased Democrat gains of the past decade and captured 63 seats in the House and 5 seats in the Senate to regain at least a single toehold in the Legislative Branch. Slowly but surely the Affordable Care Act worked its way through the Judicial Branch. Everyone who pined for appeal saw the Supreme Court as the cavalry raising a cloud of dust in the distance. It turned out that they were wearing a different uniform.
So who is to blame? Is it John Roberts or Harry Reed? Is it Barack Obama or George Bush?
I’ll give you my opinion: it is all of us Americans, that’s who. We either cast a ballot for every one of those officials who voted for or against a bill or for or against an appointment or we did not. We either paid attention to the issues at hand or we did not. We either got active, informed, passionate and involved or we did not. We let the reins of government slip through our fingers such that the majorities in the House and Senate got so lopsided that there was no counterbalance to the myopia that seized the Presidency and Congress. We looked to the Supreme Court to bail us out and it did not do so. Americans: guilty!
Perhaps “Pogo” cartoonist Walt Kelly summed it up best in a 1970 strip when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Indeed he is correct. This battle is now in our hands. The Supreme Court has spoken. We did not like what we heard. The President has spoken. We did not like what he said. Congress has spoken. We did not like their arrogance.
Nothing will change until we re-engage in the political process and drum out of Washington those career politicians who are corrupted by their own avarice and intoxicated by their own saliva. Walt Kelly also said this, “Don’t take life so serious, son. It ain’t nohow permanent.” Neither is Obamacare.
Press on.
Filed under Essay
On Pessimism: Essay for June 26, 2012
“Optimism is a force multiplier.” So said General Colin Powell long before he was involved in politics. It was the mantra he used to lead those under his command. From The Little Engine That Could to the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, optimism bores through an obstacle like a candle burns through the darkness.
The converse of that statement is equally true. Pessimism is a force diminisher. The real problem with pessimism is that it is virally contagious. It spreads like a pandemic without antidote. Its’ effects are deleterious. Pessimism convinces us that darkness is okay because our eyes will adjust over time especially if the daylight is first overcome by dusk.
It reminds me of the instructions of how to boil a frog: start with cool water and turn up the heat until the deed is done. No intelligent frog would long stay in boiling water but lull them into a false sense of security and they will stew in their own juices and thank you for the effort.
A recently released Rasmussen poll said that only 37 percent of Americans think that the best days for America lie ahead. Some 45 percent think that our best days are indeed behind us. I don’t know when those numbers were reversed. As far back as 2006 with America deeply involved in a bloody war in Iraq and a holding action in Afghanistan and with political partisanship at full throttle, the numbers were fairly similar. Pessimism abounds.
Winning streaks are hard to maintain. They are noble and enduring. Losing streaks take little effort at all to maintain. They are ignoble and best forgotten except in trivia contests. Longest batting streak in baseball? Fifty six games by Lou Gehrig. Longest losing streak for a pitcher? Twenty seven games by Anthony Young. They made movies about Hall-of-Famer Lou Gehrig. What about Anthony Young? He coaches youth baseball.
Is this to be the way of America? Are we destined to become the youth coach of the burgeoning democracies of the world? Or are we metaphorically poised to begin our fifty seven game hitting streak? I think it is a mental choice. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”
The world is an unstable and unpredictable place. It demands a steady hand on the tiller and America is the only country that can provide the leadership that the stability of the world demands. We must be willing to offer that leadership. Allowing warlords and Lesser Developed Countries to dictate the terms of their participation in the family of nations to the largest single force for good in the history of this planet is ludicrous. The outcome will be as certain as it was in Lord of the Flies.
The world needs adult supervision and that supervision must come from the United States. That leaves us with a very real problem. Who among us in this great country is up to the task of leadership? And I mean bold leadership.
The world is full of follower countries waiting for the resurgence of a renewed and focused United States. And Americans are waiting for the same leadership in our own country. We’ve heard the platitudes and we reject them not so much out of incredulity as out of desperation. The words are threadbare and shopworn.
The United States has the largest and most resilient economy in the world but who is filling the pipeline of talent to take over the seats of the aging demographic that is poised to retire? Who seriously thinks that US businesses can successfully repatriate their manufacturing if the workforce is barren of the skills necessary to complete? Our next President must do, not talk.
The United States has the largest and most competent military force in the world but does anyone think we can continue to put our forces in harm’s way to support illegitimate and unjust countries with values incompatible with our own world view? Who thinks we can continue to rotate our best and most precious human assets into combat stalemates without sacrificing the core of our collective soul? Our next President must do, not talk.
The United States has provided a safety net to the neediest among us but how long can this net endure if it becomes a hammock for those who put personal gain at odds against the collective good? Who among us thinks we can pass along the decisions we are too cowardly to make to our children and grandchildren? Our next President must do, not talk.
Certainly our President has not had enough time to bring about change that this nation so desperately needs. That is because he is lost in the wilderness and a worn footpath looks like a superhighway. He is presiding over a losing streak of epic proportions because he has no vision of what American can be and must become.
This is not the fault of the previous administration. It is the fault of President Barack Obama. This President has talked, not done. We are ready for the leader who will light the candle in the darkness.
Yogi said it was 90 percent mental and 50 percent physical. It is hard to argue with that.
Press on.
Filed under Essay
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