Election Season – Part I

This is the first of a series I am writing in anticipation of the upcoming elections in November. Last week I commented the American people, the sleeping dogs, have been awakened. Many put their confidence in the poetry of “Change and Hope”, but the prose delivered has fallen short of their romanticized expectations. Leadership and management are learned skills, not certainties due to position, advisors, charisma, or teleprompters. Blame on both parties, the elites, and the constituencie has been tossed about. Regardless of where blame falls, our country is in trouble.

In a recent discussion with my friend Monil, he brought to my attention a writing of Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton on August 26, 1776 where he wrote, “So much for the wisdom of the Senate. To make them independent, I had proposed that they should hold their places for nine years, and then go out (one third every three years) and be incapable forever of being re-elected to that house. My idea was that if they might be re-elected, they would be casting their eyes forward to the period of election (however distant) and be currying favor with the electors, and consequently dependent on them. My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years rather than for life, was that they might have an idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of the people and become the governed instead of the governors which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their independence to forget.”

Today our politicians see themselves as elites sent to Washington for life, to live off our efforts. Our two party system has ironically become a spectacle of like-minded aristocrats benefitting from larger government, more laws, and dependent constituencies. Political life at the Federal level is about personal benefit, not public service. As the election season comes upon us this year, our votes are about both our short-term future and the long-term vision for America, the future we will give our children. We watched the giddiness of a single majority manipulate parliamentary rules, object to debate, lash out at voters, run from town hall meetings, and fundamentally change our country. Whether change was best, you must decide and I challenge you to engage in the electoral process.