Politics As Usual

The political world is on fire these days. Burning questions about who shoved who back in prep school. Other burning questions about the evolution of a stance on a social issue of some significance to a small portion of the population grabbed media attention for forty-eight hours or so. Yes the presidential election open season has begun. Time for sniping, time for mud slinging and time for full blown political opportunism is here and will be with us for the next six months.

Most of you folks who know me know that my political views are somewhere to the right of our president. In fact my views are probably somewhere to the right of G. Gordon Liddy. Well maybe not that far right. But I’m an equal opportunity kind of guy when it comes to hoping for civility in political discourse. And yes I am a very naïve person. As each big campaign season comes along and gets into full swing I expect the candidates and their supporters to stick to important issues, avoid cheap and tawdry distractions and to keep the rhetoric away from innuendo and un-proven personal crap. I’m always disappointed of course.

You may be wondering where I stand on certain issues. Well, maybe not. And it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I’d like to see real discussion of what is truly important to the well being of the nation. Let’s hear real discussion about the economy with as honest a display of factual information as can be gathered. Let’s hear about proposals for energy policy that are not couched in terms of scare tactics or feel good speeches that use hundreds of words to say nothing of substance. And maybe most importantly let’s hear how each of the candidates for every office feels about the role of government in our personal and private lives. We probably should hear about their views on education, defense, government waste, health care and a host of other things more important than the questions of same sex marriage or bullying.

Those last two issues may have some relevance to a few folks and that’s fine. But somehow I don’t believe those issues will define the future of our country as much as the truly frightening national debt levels. In fact I don’t believe they are more important than the problems of gross negligence on the part of people elected to serve in good faith who have worked so very hard to strengthen their holds on their offices while corrupting and abusing the system they should be reforming. And the number of corrupt politicians is probably the most troubling of all of our problems because until the corruption is driven out the reforming will never really start.

Crap, this blog isn’t funny at all. That’s the problem with politics these days. Outside of Joe Biden there’s nothing funny about it. So I guess it’s up to us to try and sift through all the baloney that will fill the airwaves and print media over the next months. It’ll be up to us to go to town meetings and try to ask questions that mean more than the celebrity junk the so called news professionals will ask. And it’ll be up to us to make our choices at the end of the process. Then it will be up to us to live with the results.

Have a fine day.