The biggest favor I did myself this week was watch "60 Minutes." In addition to a fantastic feature with the great historian/author David McCollough, who gave me, Morley Shaffer, and anyone watching a true history lesson on elections, presidents, and our founding fathers, the opening segment reaffirmed yet once again what pisses me off endlessly about politics.
No, it's not my differences with republicans. No, it's not politicians in general. (I once argued many years ago in what turned out to be an all-night debate over a camp fire that I inherently believed politicians had good intentions at heart.) What pisses me off endlessly about politics is partisanship and just how many people have been hookwinked into believing that this is the way modern politics is supposed to operate. It's not.
Our leaders are supposed to be elected to lead us, all of us. Above all, they are supposed to be elected by the people to serve the people and put in place what's best for all the people. All the people. Above all else, they are elected to create solutions to fix the problems that affect the country. They are elected to come together, work together, think together, and compromise together to put what's wrong right. They aren't elected to make certain the residing president of the country is not re-elected. They aren't elected to ensure they themselves are re-elected. They aren't elected to carry the party line, to vote with the party. They are elected to represent their constituents and enact change that benefits the people. Country over party.
Want to know on just how massive of a scale the Senate is currently failing, read or watch the "Is The U.S. Senate Broken?" segment on "60 Minutes." What used to be known as "the world's greatest deliberative body," reports Steve Croft, is today known for "deadlock, dysfunction, and political gamesmanship."
How bad has it gotten? Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican with 33 years experience, quit her re-election race earlier this year when she determined "that the partisanship that dominates Washington, D.C., was unlikely to change."
How bad has it gotten? Hell, I'm finding myself kneeling before conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, a conservative from my own state's long-time rival Oklahoma, because he's making more sense and seems to have more integrity and logic than anyone on the political scene. What are Coburn's feelings on the job the Senate is currently doing? How about this from an August article:
Evan Bayh: Well, you buck the party line, there's a price to be paid. What used to be seen as an act of statesmanship trying to forge consensus across the aisle to move the country forward is now viewed by many as a betrayal of your party. So you get senators who vote with their party 95 percent, 98 percent of the time. And they're being run out because some people think, "that's not enough."
No, it's not my differences with republicans. No, it's not politicians in general. (I once argued many years ago in what turned out to be an all-night debate over a camp fire that I inherently believed politicians had good intentions at heart.) What pisses me off endlessly about politics is partisanship and just how many people have been hookwinked into believing that this is the way modern politics is supposed to operate. It's not.
Our leaders are supposed to be elected to lead us, all of us. Above all, they are supposed to be elected by the people to serve the people and put in place what's best for all the people. All the people. Above all else, they are elected to create solutions to fix the problems that affect the country. They are elected to come together, work together, think together, and compromise together to put what's wrong right. They aren't elected to make certain the residing president of the country is not re-elected. They aren't elected to ensure they themselves are re-elected. They aren't elected to carry the party line, to vote with the party. They are elected to represent their constituents and enact change that benefits the people. Country over party.
Want to know on just how massive of a scale the Senate is currently failing, read or watch the "Is The U.S. Senate Broken?" segment on "60 Minutes." What used to be known as "the world's greatest deliberative body," reports Steve Croft, is today known for "deadlock, dysfunction, and political gamesmanship."
How bad has it gotten? Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican with 33 years experience, quit her re-election race earlier this year when she determined "that the partisanship that dominates Washington, D.C., was unlikely to change."
How bad has it gotten? Hell, I'm finding myself kneeling before conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, a conservative from my own state's long-time rival Oklahoma, because he's making more sense and seems to have more integrity and logic than anyone on the political scene. What are Coburn's feelings on the job the Senate is currently doing? How about this from an August article:
"I think I'm probably at the highest level of frustration I've ever been since I've been in Washington," said the two-term senator, who plans to leave Congress in 2016, under a self-imposed term limit.
"Everybody says we can't do anything before the election, we might not get reelected. Well why the heck did we come here if it wasn't to fix problems?" Coburn demanded.
Coburn may be one of the few people in Washington -- in all of American politics -- who refuses to accept the status quo in an election year.
When he points out that "the problems are obvious," he's obviously correct. The national debt is approaching $16 trillion, the government has run four straight trillion-dollar deficits, the economy is stalled again and the tax code has become so unpredictable due to short-term fixes that the expiration of multiple patch-like measures at the end of the year has come to be known as "the fiscal cliff."
There are democrats that are disgusted as well. Consider this segment from the "60 Minutes" piece:
Former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, another moderate gave up his safe Democratic seat and a promising Senate career two years ago. His father, Birch Bayh, had also been a U.S. senator, and he grew up around the institution when it was a more collegial and less partisan place. The two-time governor and one-time Democratic presidential aspirant said he became disillusioned with the Senate when "brain dead ideology" began to take precedence over "principled compromise."
Evan Bayh: Everything is so short-term, politically tactical. It's all, "How do we win the next vote? How do we, you know, win the next news cycle? How do we win the next election?"
Bayh told us he particularly disliked going to the weekly Senate Democratic caucus lunches.
Evan Bayh: And a lot of those lunches are about, "OK, we're a team. We gotta stick together. We gotta beat the daylights out of the other side. We can't afford anybody straying from the team. If you do, that doesn't help us."
Steve Kroft: What happens if you buck the leadership?
Evan Bayh: Well, you buck the party line, there's a price to be paid. What used to be seen as an act of statesmanship trying to forge consensus across the aisle to move the country forward is now viewed by many as a betrayal of your party. So you get senators who vote with their party 95 percent, 98 percent of the time. And they're being run out because some people think, "that's not enough."
Steve Kroft: Why has it been so difficult to compromise?
Tom Coburn: It's leadership. It's pure leadership. When the goal is always to win the next election, rather than to put the country on the right course, whether it's a Republican leading it or the-- a Democrat leading it, the Senate is not going to work.
So, what can we do about it? As McCollough said, we should treat candidates in the same way we treat going to the theater. Critically. In other words, in the same way you analyze a movie, a TV show, or a meal, you should do the same to your representatives. If they're doing a "punk" job, to paraphrase McCollough, spread the word. Let me know. Don't elect them.
If we don't, we're the ones that will suffer. Our children will suffer. And so will theirs.
Here's how the republican Coburn sees the situation, and I can't say I disagree (and that's saying something coming from a tree-hugging liberal.)
"The country's bankrupt, we're seeing it unfold in Europe. We're going to see it unfold elsewhere, and it's going to come to us," he said. "What we have on both sides of the aisle are groups of people who refuse to make the hard choices. And so the country suffers."
"What we lack," he says, "is leadership."
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