Let's take a break from the unoriginal blathering of Yours Truly and look more closely at what others have to say. Specifically, I'd like to direct you to a post from a mysterious young voice who goes simply by the name: Darrell.
This piece is a few weeks old, but it has some substantive ideas worth looking back in time for. Mr. Darrell talks of the different forms of rhetoric used by President Obama in pushing for his American Jobs Act and the deficit reduction proposal which would fund such a plan. The overarching idea emerges from this ending sentence though:
Congressional rhetoric is connected to the internal politics and tension that appears on the political battlefield called Washington, D.C.
That is a haymaker among sentences, but I'm not particularly opposed to the direction this punch is thrown in. American politics have almost become, by definition, a struggle between left and right, Democrat and Republican, Keynesian and Keynesian-opposed. To be sure, political disagreements are a sign of a healthy democracy. (The lack of such activity might suggest authoritarian rule, which most would agree is rather distasteful.) But what we have today resembles a professional sport with only two major teams and lots of corporate sponsors. In calling Washington a "battlefield," Mr. Darrell himself was appropriately using some clever rhetoric.
The American political system will probably always foster a competitive atmosphere like this, but, as Mr. Darrell aptly puts it, in a context like our current one, "compromises are hard to reach." If the vast majority of the American people view their role as a voter as choosing either Team 1 or Team 2, there really isn't much hope for finding a middle ground. The limits of a two-party system are frustrating: you essentially have two options, and in the case of the U.S., many become so glued to these two options that finding the third is akin to growing another arm.
Lightly walking through the White House's website, it's not hard to see that the President himself tires of congressional sloth. "WE CAN'T WAIT ON CONGRESS: THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW," declares the top of the home page. Mr. Obama's not so subtle criticism of blatant Congressional partisanship is far from unreasonable. Our friend Mr. Darrell cites a Harvard study revealing that a full 27% of Senatorial press releases between 2005 and 2007 were devoted to the noble public service of... taunting other Senators. The point, my friends, is this: When competition over political influence becomes just as important as upholding the responsibilities which that influence entails (namely, serving and governing our nation in a democratic manner), we have a problem, and that problem compromises our ability to solve other problems. Unfortunately, we have a lot of other problems right now.
On a lighter note: It would be amusing to see two teams of U.S. Senators dressed in Democrat and Republican jerseys duke it out on a basketball court or football field. "Durbin to Franken and it's STOLEN by McCain!"
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