I am sick of the two-party system. It has proven to be ineffective and it seems like the American people have no idea how to fix it. The fact is that over 5 trillion dollars was added to the national debt in the last four years. This seems like an obvious failure to me.
The number of the previous four years was almost 5 trillion and that was cited a failure by our incumbent president. I wonder what he thinks about his own performance which was even worse. I will not defend this man by saying it was the legislature, because he used a similar argument against a political opponent just four years ago. It’s all fair Barack. But this article is hardly about Obama, it is about ALL OF THE ABOVE.
Logically, most anyone with a business mind would agree that these types of losses are not acceptable. In the private sector heads would roll over such losses. You can’t lose money like that and keep your job in corporate America. The private sector has no patience for players who spend money and do not know how to make it.
I have heard numbers ranging from 5.4 trillion to 5.76 trillion in new debt accumulated over the last four years. It is frightening enough to know that the exact number isn’t always apparent because 0.36 trillion is 360 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money. Either way, let’s assume that it’s open for interpretation and just admit that the number is way too high. It was too high in the Bush years as well. This is not an indictment of Obama. It’s an indictment of the entire system.
Obviously our legislators did not perform in the last four years, it was not just Obama. Can we all agree to that? Can we all agree that these elected officials left the cabinets even more bare than when they started? If you can not agree to that then I don’t know what is wrong with your thinking because numbers do not lie. If these numbers appear on a profit/loss statement of a Fortune 500 company then people can and will raise hell. Drastic changes will result in trying to return to profitability. Evidently the same thing can not be said for our government.
Here is a fact that I find horrifying. As a former business owner it makes me wonder what in the hell people could be thinking. 393 Congressional incumbents sought re-election in 2012. 358 were re-elected. 91% gained a vote of confidence and another shot at fixing what they screwed up to begin with. Want to know an even more frightening number? This is 2% lower than the historical average since 1954. In other words…we would have expected more like 93% to be re-elected.
Many people think that the government doesn’t respect their opinions and honestly why should they? We are willing to watch things unravel in front of us and vote for more of the same. Shame on us! I blame the two-party system. People are so afraid to vote against their own party. They seem to be incapable of independent thought at this point.
Every district seems to have the same naïve belief. Congress is failing us but it is not because of my representative. He/she is one of the good people of Congress. If we had a few hundred more like my rep then everything would get fixed. Bull s**t!!! Do we not understand that the guy in San Francisco and the woman in Chicago feel exactly the same way? The legislator from Detroit that is viewed as a devil in my district, is heralded as a savior in his district. They feel that our representative is the problem, not their representative. We stand divided and everyone wants to blame someone else, but few want to focus on solutions and results.
The truth is that these local representatives have us fooled. If they don’t have us fooled then our political ideology does. We are so afraid to vote for the other political party that we will re-elect a poorly performing member of our party, just to stick to party lines. Candidates know this. They are not stupid. They don’t have to perform if they are carrying the right political banner.
Are you a baseball fan? If a starting pitcher has a career ERA of 7.50 (very bad performance) he doesn’t get a new 4 or 6 year MLB contract and a vote of confidence, does he?
Oh wait, he’s from my home town. Maybe I’ll pay him 20 million a year just to suck. This will piss off fans and ticket revenue will decrease. We won’t likely get to the post season which will cost us more potential revenue, but it’s all worth it because I support my homies. A baseball owner with that kind of thinking won’t be very successful.
If a new chef causes restaurant business to decrease by 30%, the owner will be looking for a new chef, am I correct?
Maybe I will give Antoine another shot. The 30% decrease in revenue won’t last because with experience he will get better. In another 5 years I will probably be back at the point I was before I hired him. I can wait. It’s just money. Sounds like a pretty dumb restaurant owner doesn’t it?
If a newbie fashion designer convinces you to invest 2 million dollars in her design, which eventually flops and almost causes you to shut your doors, will you give her another vote of confidence?
Jasmine had a great idea. I can not help it that my customers are fashion morons and didn’t see her vision. I would rather lose money and continue to do the right thing, than risk losing Jasmine… Sounds a lot like partisan voters in our country, doesn’t it? Who cares about results? What’s important is that we keep that democrat or republican in office.
It needs to be about results. Until we start to hold our own elected officials accountable for the performance of the team, we will keep seeing more of the same.
That is how decisions in business work. We don’t give second chances on major screw ups. We cut our losses, fire some people, and move forward. This is also how our government should work. If you get poor results or cost us money, you should lose your job. Period!
This attitude is why good American businesses can make money but our government never seems to create a surplus. The goal in business is simple…to make a profit. If you don’t make a profit you lose your job. Plain and simple. End of story.
Under the current system this mandate can not be made to our officials. We are simply not free thinkers anymore, at least when it comes to politics.
We stick so close to the Republican or Democratic tit, that we are never fully weaned to go out on our own. This is a crying shame. For a country built on ideas and innovation, we sure can’t seem to transfer that thinking to politics.
The one man who had a chance to break through this barrier on a big stage eventually wilted under intense pressure. A lot of people forget that Ross Perot was leading in the national polls before “death threats” caused him to drop out. To his credit he did return but when he returned he had lost the respect of many voters. He was able to rally enough to make a respectable showing, but at one time he was the front-runner. Some people may not remember that. It’s a fact.
Perot made us forget about being democrat or republican for a moment and made it acceptable to be angry at, and vote against our own party. A vote against our own party did not have to be a vote for the hated Democrats or the hated Republicans. He almost pulled it off.
No one will ever know, but my belief is that Perot would have won had he not shown weakness. When he re-entered the race he was sitting at 7-9% (less that one-third of his previous numbers) and rallied enough to make it interesting again. People wanted to believe in Ross Perot, but he betrayed our faith in his leadership when he stepped down. Returning and trying to do the right thing was not enough. We now saw a leader that might easily crack under pressure.
Since that time no one has really made a dent in the two-party system and I think it’s a shame. Obviously the system is not producing the desired results.
What is even more baffling to me is that many of these people come from the private sector. As former executives they would surely fire those who netted the same results that they are producing. They wouldn’t wait four years to pull the trigger either.
I think every politician should be asked this question, and made to answer it on a large national stage… “Why should we re-hire you or any of your co-workers with the performance you have given us over the last ___ years? How can you guarantee that past results will not be repeated?”
If we can go through the financial hell of the last four years, and vote the same as we did four years ago…something is definitely wrong in America.
It’s not just Obama. It is the Senate and the House as well. If we want change we have to vote for change. We have to demand it.
On another day I’d like to talk about how the two-party system keeps this from happening. The bottom line is that they know people will not revolt when the people are divided by party lines. They realize the two people who do not agree can not easily join together to fight for a common cause. That is part of the conspiracy side of the two-party system and politics in general, and it’s based on proven studies of human psychology, but that’s a topic for another day.
Voting party lines will never successfully bring radical change. Radical change is what it will take to fix things. For some reason we hold to this belief that things would be different if every seat was held by our own political party. Let me digress for a minute. In my county we elect our coroner. What difference does it make if our coroner is a democrat or republican? I think it is silly. Is one party more likely to prematurely declare someone deceased and risk a major failure by the coroner’s office? Most people would agree that the party affiliation doesn’t matter for this office, but I know lots of people who vote straight democrat or republican tickets. It’s insanity. They would vote for a Republican coroner who was fresh out of college, running against a Democrat with 30 years of experience. That’s how rigid people can be on party lines. Coroner? I think it should be a libertarian coroner, but we can debate that another day. 😉
Our view of giving one party all the power is dangerous. That’s how corruption could spiral out of control in a hurry. If you think the system is corrupt now, try giving all the power to one party.
I also realize that people don’t believe third-party or independent candidates can ever become a viable option. Who could blame them for that belief because the one big chance we had crumbled on us?
The overwhelming belief is that there is not enough support for such things. I believe Perot was able to prove this belief wrong but it’s hard to hang our hats on a guy who was weak enough to drop out.
Back to the two-party system, and how we can’t easily fight them… or can we??? All I can say is that these are not the same two political parties of our founders. Other political parties have come and gone and that happened because people were not afraid to cast their votes elsewhere. We just have to open our eyes and start to vote our conscience, instead of acting like brain dead lemmings getting ready to leap off the cliff, or maybe the “fiscal” cliff in today’s terms.
Do we not understand that Republicans and Democrats want us to stay partisan? They don’t want us to embrace widespread change. The two-party system works for the two parties because they have found that they can fool most of the people ALL of the time.
Both the Repulican and Democratic parties operate as big businesses, and business is good..for them. They don’t want us to rock the boat.
The last four years were a financial disaster. I’m not sure how anyone can see it otherwise. They were much like the four years before that. Yet we endorse it, embrace it, and ask for more of the same. Let’s think about that the next time we vote for an incumbent from either party. For the love of all that’s good, at least we can vote against them in the primary if party lines are that important to us. We must start holding them all accountable, which has to include members of our own party. They will, of course, all blame each other and we all continue to believe it.
The president blames the legislative branch. The Senate blames the House. The Democrats blame Republicans. Or vice-versa in all cases! Those who get blamed send the blame right back where it came from…and it is perpetual. Not many politicians take credit for their own failures but they do try to claim credit for the successes of others. We deserve someone who will get results, not people who play the blame game, or the fame game.
We must accept responsibility to think for ourselves, instead of thinking the way our political party tells us to think. Unplug the TV for a few nights and think about what is really right for this country, and not what the biased media networks are saying. Change must start with YOU. Small sparks can still start large fires.
God Bless the American People.
