After watching Congress for the past year, I’ve become convinced that the parties are incapable of governing our country. On one side, you have the Republicans who have decided that if they can’t make all the decisions, they will do everything they can to make sure that nothing gets done. This is not overly surprising; the GOPers of today don’t believe in government, period. They have marched virtually in lockstep (as they are wont to do) to obstruct any and all legislation that would help the middle-class deal with the enormous problems facing us, holding up any appointments that Obama has attempted to make that don’t agree with their view of what the real world should be and generally refusing to do the job they were elected to do. They might as well be replaced by the bunch of chimps in the CareerBuilder.com ads that sit around in suits and vigorously shake their heads “NO” at every opportunity. If you don’t want to at least make a feeble effort at contributing to the governance of this country, then get the hell out. We’ve got plenty of blathering fools who are not paid by the taxpayers to misstate and mislead an increasingly gullible public. I’m sure FOX News could use an orange guy in their lineup.

Now before you all start getting in a huff and pounding on your CapsLk button, let’s look at the Democratic Party. It has been so beaten and cowed over the past eight years, it has managed to squander a filibuster proof majority. They’ve let a small number of small state Senators hijack the entire legislative process. Even though the polls showed overwhelming support for things like health care reform, banking and global warming reform, the party has managed to dither and fritter away a tremendous opportunity to actually do something. Ridiculous Senate rules have virtually brought any hope of effectively dealing with any serious problems to a halt. If someone hands you a stick, like the voters did in 2006 and 2008, you don’t hand it to the minority and ask them to please beat you over the head with it! If Joe Lieberman or John McCain or whoever says they might filibuster, you don’t cave in without a fight! You make them put their mouth where the money is and stand up and talk for three days or so to see if they’re really serious. After losing Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, they acted like the chance to ever get anything done was over. For God’s sake, W. managed to foist all sorts of idiot ideas through Congress with a much smaller majority. Of course, much of that was due to the Democratic Party propensity to fold before they’ve even tried.

The Obama administration is certainly not without fault here either. When he was elected, I thought, “finally, here’s a guy with brains who can get things done!” Instead, he seems to have surrounded himself with the same tired political hacks who abetted the people who got us into this mess, and decided to let Congress figure a way out while he sat back on the sidelines. What was he thinking? Congress is completely dysfunctional and incapable of legislating their way out of a paper bag. It’s going to take strong leadership. Someone has to step up and grab the reins. Where are the LBJs and Tip O’Neills and the FDRs, who managed to force Congress to overcome their weak kneed ways to do great things? I thought Obama was that guy. Maybe he is. We’ll see.

Before you think I’ve become a Teabagger, let’s take a look at the disenchanted electorate. They are mad as hell, but not quite sure why. To save time, I’ll boil it down to its simplest form. It wants its Medicare untouched, but doesn’t want to have to be taxed to pay for it. It wants its basic government functions to continue, but doesn’t trust government. The party has been buffaloed into thinking that government is the problem. Government is only as effective as the people you elect to run it. As long as politicians keep spending the vast majority of their time raising money to keep that job, we’re going to have ineffective government. And you’d better hope you don’t have to see what would replace those taxes if government was privatized. The inaptly named free market is anything but. Why would you want to take away control of the purse strings? If money were to be taken out of the process, maybe we could elect people on the merits of their ideas. Maybe then they would have the time and inclination to do what’s right for us. In politics, money is the root of all evil. It’s certainly not free speech.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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