Many thanks to those of you who responded to my last Blog. I still believe my assertion that our government is broken is true. Yes, government does many things effectively because of past decisions by the Congress, but the process of making laws has reached a crisis stalemate.
But don’t take my word for it. Thomas Mann (Brookings Institute) and Norman Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute), a liberal and a conservative, have documented this as a fact in their book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. “For all the problems that existed in previous decades in a system designed not to act with dispatch,” they wrote in a recent article echoing what they say in the book, “there was a strong political center, with responsible bipartisan leadership. The same cannot be said today.”
The diversity of your answers to my question says the same thing in a different way. It confirms the fact that good will working on behalf of the common good is essential for our government to work. Here is a summary of what you suggested: (1) we actively prevent people from voting in so many ways…primaries should be open to everyone, with minimum obstacles to nomination; (2) we need more good statesmen/stateswomen; (3) term limits; (4) the influence of money in politics, and therefore government, has become pervasive and destructive; (5) too much judgmentalism and not enough willingness to resolve the basic issues facing our nation and the world; (6) our leaders need to experience the “plagues” to further the collapse of empire and oligarchy and set us free from economic obsession to focus on issues of freedom and justice; (7) the checks and balances built into our system have been compromised, and we the people are partially to blame for that; (8) take to heart Eisenhower’s warning about the looming power of the “military industrial complex”; (9) when we conquer our own complacency in sufficient numbers…then we will effect change; (10) the corrupting influence of money must be stopped.
These different views about the same problem underscore the fact that compromise is the only way solutions to our nation’s problems can be found. But, again, compromise depends on a desire to serve the common good, something radical ideologues don’t possess. But their inordinate influence as a minority comes from what is called “the tyranny of the minority,” as we saw in the vote on gun control reform. This has to change.
Filibuster reform is the most achievable action to take in this regard. But Democrats have been too timid to enact practical changes because they want to make sure they can do what the Republicans are now doing if they lose the majority. In short, they want to ensure long term dysfunction that threatens our democracy. Our recourse is to vote out members of both parties in a primary or general election who refuse to commit to reforming the filibuster,. What could also change the situation is to pressure at least one Senator to challenge the filibuster in court. Only a member of the Senate has the legal standing to make this challenge, but there is a good chance a court would view the filibuster as unconstitutional because it negates majority rule.
Voters also have to be more discerning than they are now. I understand how unlikely that is, but we cannot give up on it, as some of you also suggested. Those of us who pay attention have to talk to anyone anywhere anytime about what is happening. We have to write and/or call our representatives and attend open house meetings with them. We also need to put our role in what is happening in its moral context. Choosing party loyalty over what is good for the nation when we vote makes us complicit in the immorality that special interest politics represents. We cannot make excuses for our political party by claiming the other side is worse. When we complain about what politicians do, but turn around a re-elect them, we are living examples of Pogo’s words of long ago: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
I truly worry about the state of our nation the next generation will inherit. Unless things change, they will wonder why we allowed the democratic ideals we claim to believe in to be undermined and did nothing about it. So why are we?
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I too worry about the state of the nation the next generation will inherit. The current gridlock in DC is more than alarming, it is discouraging and disgusting.
The alarming response to the recent Senate bill on stiffer background checks for all gun purchases seems to underscore what we all felt we knew, that money is the power behind the NRA control of in-place politicians and the threat to the election of any courageous opponent that may attempt to unseat them. It is especially discouraging that even DEMOCRATS are caving in to that $$ pressure and threat. Someone has GOT to put an end to this degree of special interest influence. The NRA is not the only special interest exercising that pressure. Those SOMEONES have got to be us, pressuring our legislators as much as possible. I’m pledging myself to that and call on others to do the same. I have book marked the internet sites that provide daily voting
results in state and national legislatures. My eyes have been closed for too long and I’m the only one who can open them….
Gutless/spineless political leaders, inattentive populace and politics as war is a formula for a near term failed country. I am of the opinion that mass demonstrations that put more fear in the elected leaders mind than the corporate lobbyist will do some good as will bringing back the draft with no rich person exemption. letter writing, calling legislators also helps. A million people in streets of DC will help bring about a solution to the sequestration that the right wing is loving is a doable thing, but most important we have to try.