Wednesday, November 3, 2010
That honestly profound observation in the headline was made by no more or less an authority than… than my wife. In her own, wonderfully direct way, she has summed up what’s wrong with our government.
It’s not about who we elect. Not really. Maybe it used to be, but not anymore. No. The media, obsessively focused on the politics of it all, may lead us to believe that it’s about ideologies, about inherent differences between Democrats and Republicans and now the Tea Party movement. Those differences are overblown, interesting at most, and pretty much irrelevant as a root cause for the mess we call “Washington.”
There are deeply rooted structural problems with our government which, until they are fully appreciated and corrected, will continue to prevent that government from managing effectively.
We have way too many players constantly running for office, who are, for all meaningful intents and purposes, clueless. What we have, is a simple political tradition which has evolved, which has been perverted to the point of requiring a very different skill set to get elected, than it takes to do what we need our representatives – the President included – to do after they are elected. The result is a superficiality of government which invariably misses the point.
All the pundits, analysts and victory speeches aside, after yesterday’s election, the only thing I know for sure is that I love my wife. If only she had political aspirations.
-wf
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