Yesterday those Americans who were treated to the Blair House health care summit saw a President who told Congress that his time was more equal than theirs and snippily retorted that the 2008 campaign was over when John McCain made a point challenging one of Obama’s assertions.
Obviously the two parties have a very different perspective on what needs to be done with the healthcare issue, and the American people don’t necessarily agree with either side. Same goes for a number of other issues like the (so-called) stimulus, environment, energy independence, and foreign policy.
But this generation isn’t the only one who has wrestled with difficult issues. Over portions of four different centuries Americans have disagreed over a table, in a chamber, and even on a number of battlefields that include a few in our fair state of Maryland. Our Founding Fathers were divided into two camps, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, who made their case through debates and competing pamphlets – perhaps that was the internet of the day.
So what we are going through isn’t really new – I’m sure you could have even found a few folks back in the day who thought George Washington was a horrible President.
Yet there was also created with our system of government a system of checks and balances, and perhaps the three-legged stool isn’t standing so straight these days. With one party controlling the legislative and executive branches, the lone check on their power is the judiciary branch whose highest court hangs with a delicate balance of conservatives vs. liberals – should one of the conservative justices falter it’s possible that the next high court member could tilt the entire court in the opposite direction.
Once again we sit at a precipice which can determine the direction our nation will take. We in the political business are fond of using (or overusing) the phrase, “this is the most important election in years/a generation/our lifetime.”
In this case, though, the hyperbole may be true. If Americans elect a solid conservative majority we would see perhaps the quickest partisan turnaround in history, going from a solidly Democratic House to one run by Republicans and the onetime filibusterproof Democratic majority in the Senate coming down to possibly a split 50-50 body where Vice-President Biden may have more to do than snooze through a seven-hour long summit.
Some decry the loss of what they consider thoughtful moderates in each body, but over the last several decades we’ve seen moderation continue the helpless drift our nation has endured from republic to tyranny, with the federal government controlling more and more of the pursestrings and determining who wins and who loses in business and society. I don’t mind bipartisanship as long as it works in a manner that promotes the conservative, limited-government, Constitutional direction I believe the country needs to progress in. A 218-217 spilt in the House between parties is fine, but I truly want 435-0 conservative.
There is a core of about 100 Congressmen and maybe 20 Senators who deserve to be re-elected, in my opinion. The rest can be retired as far as I care.
In my lifetime, we’ve had a total of about 4 years when Republicans controlled both legislative branches and the exceutive branch (the pre-Jeffords jump 107th Congress and 108th/109th Congresses) – but conservatism hardly advanced because too many people said we had to be “bipartisan.” Bipartisanism has its use, but to me it’s a question of philosophy over party and what we need is a philosophical overhaul of Congress this year and the executive branch in 2012.
