Compromising Victory

I’ve held off on this post for over a week.  Not because I was too busy celebrating over the major sweeps Democrats made…though I was celebrating.  Repeatedly, with no sign of a diminishing enthusiasm.  My team won, cleaned up in almost every section of the state, and won the presidential election with room to spare.  Fantastic…now go lead.

After looking at this election, my thought is simple: what’s really changed?  We have a senate minority leader who still thinks he’s in the majority, a House of Representatives that is still in lock step amongst party lines, and neither part of congress can seem to agree on what’s going to be done about anything.  A week has gone by, and I can visualize two-hundred-plus weeks in the future of the population asking why are we paying taxes?  For the honor of hearing a hundred senators say something must be done and then sit there?  Have a president demand reforms the populace agrees with, but will never pass because they don’t poll well enough nationwide?

We are a country divided.  First off on that note, good.  Differing opinions rock, that’s how policies are refined.  If we can have two positions on an issue, I’m sure we could find a third.  But we are not looking at differing policies, but two mountains staring at each other across a valley.  They won’t move any which way, just stands as the wind blows by, confident of their own self-importance.  Meanwhile the world goes on.

We are facing huge and immediate dangers in this country.  Foremost is the fiscal cliff, President Bush’s tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this calendar year.  Suddenly everyone will turn around and notice that their money isn’t theirs anymore, but it’s with a government that has no clue about what to spend this new money on.  President Obama is demanding that people making over a quarter of a million dollars a year should pay more taxes.  Congressional Republicans claim the president has not given congress a viable plan.  Rock, hard place, and the American people are caught right in the middle.

This isn’t a simple decision.  Is there a need for more taxes on the extremely wealthy?  Yes, if only so we can start balancing a budget, get our country back where it belongs, and start removing the national debt from our minds.  But at the same time, there are entitlements that need to be removed, reformed and restructured.  So both sides are right, and both sides are wrong.  How this economic decision is made isn’t the simple decision.  But making that decision, actually committing to doing something other than complain that nothing is being done, that is quite simple.  Politicians weren’t elected just so they could be on TV twenty-four seven and have a cool letterhead.  They are expected to make actual decisions.

We have a fantastic government, capable of extraordinary things.  But first it needs to stop screaming at itself.

Stay strange.

“Democracy is the worst form of government…except for all those others that have been tried.”

-          Winston Churchill