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I first used this title for a series of letters I had written which were published in a local newspaper. They were in response to a number of editorials call "Common Sense" which in my mind were neither common nor sensible. In fact they were primarily aimed at stopping the construction of a new high school. Fortunately sane minds prevailed in the end and that school is now a wonderful addition to our communities and a great center of learning for our kids.
So what really prompted me to resurrect "Uncommon Sense"? For the past few weeks we have not been able to turn on a TV without being bombarded by talking heads, pollsters, unending commercials with some guy chasing a green animated geco around and enough sound bites from the candidates to make us all numb as to what is actually being said. It seemed like the right time to try to cut through the noise and take a calmer look at what is happening in our political process (and the country in general for that matter).
I'm about to turn 55 next week. I got a card from my sister welcoming me to middle age. She never was that good at math since there is no way in hell I am going to be hanging around at 110. But like many of the "boomers" my views of the world and the state of our nation have changed somewhat with age. The problem is that we don't quite fit anywhere politically.
We've grown into fiscal conservatives who are environmentally aware. We don't want the government interfering in our private lives but a lack of government oversight has created our current economic crises. We believe in human rights and freedom but reject the idea that it is our job to impose those beliefs on the world. We believe in democracy but only a third of us actually exercise our right to vote. We want to have our cake and eat it too as we watch our country prosecute two wars at $12 billion a month but we don't want to have our taxes increased to pay for it.
So now we are less than two months away from selecting the next President. It's time to cut through the noise and find the substance. The first question to ask is are we better off than we were 8 years ago? Oh, I know there's a bunch of you yelling that Bush isn't running for office. Or is he? John McCain, like it or not has voted with Bush more than 90% of the time. We are only kidding ourselves if we think that a McCain presidency would be any different. In all my years in and around politics, I have never seen the influence of large corporations and lobbyists more prevalent than they are now. Hopefully as we've gotten older we realize that what's good for Exxon/Mobil is not necessarily what's good for America. So I think that the answer to this question is no. Unemployment is up over 6%, banking failures, investment house failures, government bailouts of the largest mortgage and insurance companies in the country, over 4,000 soldiers dead, no weapons of mass destruction anywhere, the budget deficit the largest in history, gasoline at $4 a gallon (a 400% increase from when Bush took office), Osama bin Laden still out there laughing at us. I don't think that anybody believes that this is where the country should be going.
The second question is a hard reality to deal with. The actuarial tables will tell you that John McCain has a 30% chance of actually making it through his first term. That means there is a 70% probability that Sarah Palin will become the President should McCain get elected. As I said before, most of us boomers are middle of the road. Palin is anything but. She represents the most extreme right of the republican party. She's scrambling to get to the middle but her history, albeit brief pretty much let's you know where she stands. She's tried to ban books from the Wasilla library, wasted millions of tax dollars on pork like the bridge to nowhere (which she supported until there was a national outcry), probably abused her office in firing the Public Safety Commissioner for not firing her ex-brother-in-law (but worse than that has now used her influence to try and shut down the investigation), claims to support special needs kids but cut almost all of the funding for the Special Olympics in Alaska. Finally, she thinks she can handle Russia because you can see it from an island in Alaska. This is one scary candidate.
So all this makes it sound like the choice is easy. Far from it. First and foremost, we need to recognize that change is scary. Most of us don't deal well with change. We get a comfort level and don't like to see it upset. Obama is far from the ideal choice either. He is less experienced than we would like (though it will be interesting to finally have a President who is younger than me). Like it or not, race is also a factor here. Are we as a nation ready to elect a black man as President? Let's face it, with all of the problems we have which are obviously the direct result of a failed republican Presidency, John Kerry, Al Gore or Hillary Clinton would have a huge lead in the polls going into the final days of this election cycle. Instead, we find many voters struggling to find reasons not to vote for Obama. Once all of those reasons are exhausted, race is the unspoken one that remains. Well you know what. Here's our chance to show that we've evolved as a species and as a nation. This country has lost it's energy and purpose and it will take a young, fresh face to inspire us to greatness once again. It happens in cycles. JFK brought that type of energy to us after a rather uninspiring 8 years of Eisenhower. Bill Clinton brought that type of energy to us after an uninspiring 4 years of Bush 1. After 8 years of wandering aimlessly with Bush 2, Obama brings that chemistry to the table. Are we going to be smart enough to embrace it?
So what really prompted me to resurrect "Uncommon Sense"? For the past few weeks we have not been able to turn on a TV without being bombarded by talking heads, pollsters, unending commercials with some guy chasing a green animated geco around and enough sound bites from the candidates to make us all numb as to what is actually being said. It seemed like the right time to try to cut through the noise and take a calmer look at what is happening in our political process (and the country in general for that matter).
I'm about to turn 55 next week. I got a card from my sister welcoming me to middle age. She never was that good at math since there is no way in hell I am going to be hanging around at 110. But like many of the "boomers" my views of the world and the state of our nation have changed somewhat with age. The problem is that we don't quite fit anywhere politically.
We've grown into fiscal conservatives who are environmentally aware. We don't want the government interfering in our private lives but a lack of government oversight has created our current economic crises. We believe in human rights and freedom but reject the idea that it is our job to impose those beliefs on the world. We believe in democracy but only a third of us actually exercise our right to vote. We want to have our cake and eat it too as we watch our country prosecute two wars at $12 billion a month but we don't want to have our taxes increased to pay for it.
So now we are less than two months away from selecting the next President. It's time to cut through the noise and find the substance. The first question to ask is are we better off than we were 8 years ago? Oh, I know there's a bunch of you yelling that Bush isn't running for office. Or is he? John McCain, like it or not has voted with Bush more than 90% of the time. We are only kidding ourselves if we think that a McCain presidency would be any different. In all my years in and around politics, I have never seen the influence of large corporations and lobbyists more prevalent than they are now. Hopefully as we've gotten older we realize that what's good for Exxon/Mobil is not necessarily what's good for America. So I think that the answer to this question is no. Unemployment is up over 6%, banking failures, investment house failures, government bailouts of the largest mortgage and insurance companies in the country, over 4,000 soldiers dead, no weapons of mass destruction anywhere, the budget deficit the largest in history, gasoline at $4 a gallon (a 400% increase from when Bush took office), Osama bin Laden still out there laughing at us. I don't think that anybody believes that this is where the country should be going.
The second question is a hard reality to deal with. The actuarial tables will tell you that John McCain has a 30% chance of actually making it through his first term. That means there is a 70% probability that Sarah Palin will become the President should McCain get elected. As I said before, most of us boomers are middle of the road. Palin is anything but. She represents the most extreme right of the republican party. She's scrambling to get to the middle but her history, albeit brief pretty much let's you know where she stands. She's tried to ban books from the Wasilla library, wasted millions of tax dollars on pork like the bridge to nowhere (which she supported until there was a national outcry), probably abused her office in firing the Public Safety Commissioner for not firing her ex-brother-in-law (but worse than that has now used her influence to try and shut down the investigation), claims to support special needs kids but cut almost all of the funding for the Special Olympics in Alaska. Finally, she thinks she can handle Russia because you can see it from an island in Alaska. This is one scary candidate.
So all this makes it sound like the choice is easy. Far from it. First and foremost, we need to recognize that change is scary. Most of us don't deal well with change. We get a comfort level and don't like to see it upset. Obama is far from the ideal choice either. He is less experienced than we would like (though it will be interesting to finally have a President who is younger than me). Like it or not, race is also a factor here. Are we as a nation ready to elect a black man as President? Let's face it, with all of the problems we have which are obviously the direct result of a failed republican Presidency, John Kerry, Al Gore or Hillary Clinton would have a huge lead in the polls going into the final days of this election cycle. Instead, we find many voters struggling to find reasons not to vote for Obama. Once all of those reasons are exhausted, race is the unspoken one that remains. Well you know what. Here's our chance to show that we've evolved as a species and as a nation. This country has lost it's energy and purpose and it will take a young, fresh face to inspire us to greatness once again. It happens in cycles. JFK brought that type of energy to us after a rather uninspiring 8 years of Eisenhower. Bill Clinton brought that type of energy to us after an uninspiring 4 years of Bush 1. After 8 years of wandering aimlessly with Bush 2, Obama brings that chemistry to the table. Are we going to be smart enough to embrace it?
1 comment:
Passisng this on from a friend....sometimes you just can't say it better...
I'm confused.
Let me see if I have this straight... If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different." Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story. If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow , Trig and Track, you're a maverick. Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded. If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience. If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive. If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian. If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible. If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America 's. If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is extremely admirable.
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