Insanity Politics

The electorate is fed up with politics as usual. I hear it at least 4 times a week. It seems to be the new battle cry. After all, it's the reason that the Democrats won the White House and control the Congress...right?...or...is it the reason Mr. Brown went to Washington (Sen Scott Brown)?...or it is the reason ...uh...well you get the picture. If you were to stop people on the street anywhere in America and ask them if the political system is broke my guess is a large majority would say yes. If you ask them how to fix it, you will begin to see the problem. Most of those who offered a solution would repeat party sound bites. And that, my friends, is insanity. We've all heard the definition of insanity, it's "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". So how do we change politics enough to stop the insanity? I will admit that I don't have the answer, but I did have a "duh" moment this week, and no I wasn't in a Holiday Inn Express. Here's my question...

...When did the political process begin to revolve more around the party than the person?...

We...the people that is, only think about politics and government before elections, and when "government" does something we don't agree with; like rearrange the school districts, or widen the road in front of our property, or raise taxes, etc. I live in Florida, and the recent theater surrounding Governor Crist's announcement that he would run for Senate as a no party candidate has been eye opening. There was a lot of speculation about how many of his large donors would ask that contributions returned. And most of his campaign staff resigned of course. So that tells me that the donors weren't supporting Mr. Crist because the believed in the man and were confident in his ability to represent Florida in the Senate...no, they were supporting the Republican party. Likewise the campaign leadership. I may be naive but there is something wrong with that in my book. To quote Howard Troxler, an editorial writer for the St. Pete Times, "everybody likes to talk ideology, but what usually decides an election are mechanics, strategy and money." Think about that for a minute. Does that sound like what our founding fathers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution? I for one don't think so.

So how do we stop the insanity? To get any real change we are going to have to find a way to decrease the power and the influence of the party. We, the people, need to listen the political hopefuls and they in turn must listen to the people. No elected official is ever going to make all of the people happy so instead of pretending to be something they are not, to appeal the the largest number of voters, we need politicians with convictions and the moral courage to stick to them. We need politicians who are not professional politicians, but are leaders. We need politicians who are willing to go for the hard right instead of the popular wrong. I could go on but you get the picture? Do I think this is going to happen? No. It might happen occasionally at the local level, and I mean very local. Above the local level, I don't think there is an incentive to change that dramatically. Without the total collapse of the current system where the party and the loyal party minions control money and media we are going to continue the insanity...and while I can't change it, I can at least talk about it and dream...this is America after all.