America's Political Super Bowl

With the Wall Street bailout debacle going on, I feel like a failed lemming who doesn’t know which cliff to jump off. I have no idea who to believe: the group that is predicting that we will all lose our jobs through lack of available credit, or the one that says this is just another rip off. I’m not invested in the stock market precisely because I don’t pretend to understand it. All I know is that someone—make that a whole lot of someones—failed in their jobs.

The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.

This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.

The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”

On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.

On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.

Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.

What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.

Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?

I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.

I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.

I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.

I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.

My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”