I still remember how it stung when I found out Ross Perot was crazy, and how this disuaded me from supporting the very idea of third parties for years afterward. Actually, right up until this week. But I also remember how Arnie was elected Governor of California. Gray Davis won the 2002 election, and we were scolded, tut-tutted, knuckle-rapped, that “The People Had Spoken” and Gov. Davis was the representation of that will, don’t we dare question it. The recall petition, therefore, was pre-destined to fail. Well, now. That isn’t how history unfolded, is it.
I’m looking at President Obama and I’m seeing another Gray Davis. The representation of vox populi…”mandate” and everything…we shall not question it…but what does one say, when we do so question, and this popularly-elected official is popped like a soap bubble Gray-Davis style?
I don’t understand Obama’s base at all, and I understand very little of what’s popular. But I do understand there is a common theme to the dissatisfaction simmering nationwide lately, and Obama’s policies, to the extent they can be defined, don’t seem to address this theme much.
Maybe it’s time.
If I wrote the platform, I notice I wouldn’t have to choose between “What I Know Is Right Come Hell Or High Water” and “What The People Want”. Those two appear to have merged. And they merge here…
Don’t Pass On More Debt to Our Children.
How would a party like that work out? It seems to me, if the Obama voters are being honest, a large chunk of their crowd would swarm over to my new party. How many times have we heard it…”spending under George W. Bush at an all time high, public debt swelled to ten trillion, expen$ive War in Iraq costing umpthyfratz billion a day, blah blah blah.” Would it not be fair to say this is part of Obama’s “mandate,” even though The Chosen One doesn’t seem to be acting on it?
I’d say, let’s take baby steps. Let’s start with passing on a public debt to our children, equal to or lesser than what it is now — adjusted for inflation. Let’s define a generation as twenty years.
Yes I know how the public debt swelled over the last eight years. The George Bush compromise was, support the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, mister democrat congressman, and I’ll put my signature under any feel-good social program you care to name. Maybe that’s just the way people behave once they get real power. Maybe it was even the responsible thing to do. I gotta admit, if you make me choose between a President who’s willing to bribe a congressman to protect the country, and a congressman who’s going to bitch and piss and moan about “war crimes” until he gets his bribe and then suddenly shuts up…I know which one I’d trust more, and it isn’t the congressman.
But I simply can’t get behind this. President Freeberg would have said, this is the right thing to do, and if you don’t support it I’ll do everything I can to make sure you pay a cost for failing to protect the country at the voting booth. And you won’t get one nickel of spending past my veto pen over this.
But then again, President Freeberg probably wouldn’t have achieved that compromise, or any other. It’s very likely President Freeberg would have been stuck in a shouting match with Congress, with no troops mobilized anywhere.
Still and all, I can’t accept that we need to nearly double our public debt anytime some asshole like Saddam Hussein starts making trouble for the sake of making trouble.
From what I’m gathering, the democrats are getting elected by faking this “responsible stewardship of nation’s purse strings” thing. Their support comes from the idea that Former President Bush, all by his lonesome, stuck a valve in the public debt innertube and started pump pump pumping away. I think the electorate voted for whoever would pay the debt down, or at least quit racking it up. This other stuff democrats want…tax cuts are evil, we need Europe to like us moar better, you’re not a citizen you’re a serf, every little thing different about you makes you part of a complaining advocacy group, all men are rapists, guns iz bad, ten commandments are offensive, black people can’t make it without help, seventy languages are better than one, and my all-time favorite, all elections were stolen unless the democrat won ’em — the public is not, repeat not, on board.
I think the public wants fiscal conservatism.
I think they’re sold on the notion that tax hikes aren’t the answer. I think if you pass a true-false test around, with one question: “If you raise a tax rate 20%, you collect 20% more revenue” — the vast majority will, rightfully, choose FALSE. Furthermore, I think the public understands it is not only possible, but probable, that the public policy can raise more money by cutting tax rates.
But I think they further understand that raising the revenue is not the problem. Spending the revenue is the problem. Congress is entrusted with a responsibility of which, by design, it can never be worthy. My guys are doing a great job, your guys are demanding all these stupid line items in the budget we don’t really need. The system is not hospitable to the process of trying to bring a budget under control. We know this for a fact, because we have pretty much the same governmental structure in the states and they’re having exactly the same problem.
This is the source of the public’s discontent. They desperately want to send the message to Washington that spending should be brought under control — we don’t want all these feel-good programs, we don’t see ourselves as that weak, and we don’t need some burgeoning, bloated, tricked-out nanny state to tell us when our kids need to be wearing seat belts, or to put miniature trampolines under the trees for when those poor squirrels fall out of ’em.
And they don’t want a huge mess o’bailouts.
That’s why it’s so rare for the politicians to really come out and support the bailouts. It’s always the other guy supporting them. The guy you’re talking to, he hasn’t got a word to say about it, he just votes for the bailout.
That’s wrong, and the electorate knows it. They want it fixed. This time, neither one of the major parties is up to the task…or if either one really is, it isn’t really inspiring confidence in that department.
President Obama said Monday, “my team will be working closely with GM to produce a better business plan.”
