I spent a part of the weekend talking with friends about the current political scene. These days, it seems, everyone has an opinion about health care reform, economic stimulus, Cash for Clunkers, etc., etc.
My Democrat friends have recently switched from offense–demonizing and vilifying the prior administration–and are making the uncomfortable transition to defending the president and this administration.
My Republican friends are just now regaining a bit of their old swagger as they get used to their new offensive game plan–demonizing and vilifying the current administration.
I, being a wishy-washy “radical centrist” observing from the seemingly depopulated middle ground, am both amused and disappointed.
Hardly anyone I know spends much time discussing the complexity and difficulty of the issues facing all of us. Rather, I find myself listening in on fairly weird and narrow ideological justifications for holding certain opinions, either “right” or “left.”
For example, my Republican friends are defending the bulwarks of free enterprise and capitalism from the onslaught of the current brand of socialism from Washington. According to them, this socialism isn’t “creeping,” it’s galloping straight at the heart of “what makes America great.” Yet, when asked why their brand of capitalism seemed to blow a tire over the last decade, they are silent, and quickly change the subject.
My friends on the left have no less hypocrisy. They enthusiastically support all kinds of stimulus programs without much sober regard for the eventual price tag, and who will end up paying it.
This caused me to reflect back on a blog I posted last week about Three Inconvenient Little Truths. They were:
1. Every organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets.
2. Every leader gets exactly the team he or she deserves.
3. Every individual has precisely the power they want.
I think I will propose a Fourth:
4. In a democratic society, the People get exactly the leadership they deserve.
Your thoughts?
BUILT TO LEAD 
Absolutely.
I believe the greatest threats to our country are ignorance and apathy.
Our governments, from the national to local levels, are populated with elected officials who view elections as a necessary evil, an inconvenient obstacle necessary to give the people the illusion that we have a democracy.
The Founding Father knew better. We don’t directly debate and institute laws – we elect representatives who do that on our behalf. We don’t even elect the President of the United States directly. The Electoral College was established by our aristocratic Founders to ensure that the President would be one of their own class.
Gradually, we have shifted to a system where anyone can get elected to any office – which I think is a good thing – but it requires such enormous funding (approaching $1 billion for a Presidential campaign) that there’s no way most candidates can achieve the office without dragging along a long tail of promises and obligations to the special interests that contributed the big bucks.
And so, yes, we get the leadership we deserve because we have abdicated the selection process to the big money special interests.
It doesn’t matter much which party controls the White House and Congress (or the local township), it’s the same game – get what I can for me and mine. There’s a great line in the movie “The Shooter” in which a corrupt Senator says to an idealistic Marine: “There are no Democrats and Republicans, only Haves and Haves-Not.”
I think that’s true.
PL