Night Terrors

I found this question in a poll on CNN.com:  “Do you approve of the performance of your congressional representatives?”  The answers:  86 percent said no.  No surprise here.  But what causes ostensibly intelligent people to perform in a way that 86 percent of the respondents dislike their performance?  If your answer starts and stops with, they’re all idiots, you may feel better but feeling better is a short-term fix.  Another election cycle is underway and a candidate’s level of idiocy is not a good decision criterion.  So let’s look a little deeper. 

First, the country is so polarized that I doubt a single politician can appeal to both extremes.  So let’s eliminate extremism from the start.  That leaves the middle ground.  Remember that?  It was President Eisenhower’s assessment, that the middle of the road was the only place where practical solutions could be found.  So the first problem is best explained with the story of the slightly inebriated man who’s looking  under the street light for his lost keys.  When asked if he lost them there, he responds, “no I lost them down the block but the light is better here.”  So to apply this metaphor to politicians.  “No, the practical solutions are in the middle but the votes are better here at the extremes.”

The second problem is the issue of facts.  President Lincoln said, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”  Unfortunately he left out the part about what are the facts – really.  I read many items from both the left and right.  They all base their stories on facts.  The facts are almost always contradictory.

So if facts don’t point to the truth, what now?  The problem with that question is that it implies that truth and politics are somehow connected.  Wrong again.  One president said it best as his term was ending, “in eight days, I’ll be able to start telling the truth again.”  But my favorite politician-statesman (a very rare breed) Winston Churchill said it best, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

What is the truth anyway?  I’ve already written that we live in a time when the truth is considered relative and circumstantial:  When it is more about what we like and dislike.  Well even so, I’m going to take a shot at identifying one truth about our political system that stands above all others:  Our political system is prohibiting good governance.

If practical solutions are to be found in the middle and politicians are to be found at the extremes, they will never meet.  If the so-called facts are not reliable and politicians cannot tell the truth for fear of losing their jobs, we’re sunk.

I can only think of one radical solution:  Limit every politician except the president to a term to six years.  Give the president one term of eight years.  No more mid-term elections.  No more campaigning from their first day in office.  No more spinning the facts to pander to either extreme.  No more decisions influenced more by a need to be re-elected than by the needs of the country.  If they don’t need to get re-elected, I suspect that we’ll have politicians who focus on finding the practical rather than political solutions.   In other words, take the politicking out of politics and give good governance a chance.

I know that my idea is only a dream.  But the situation in our country reminds me of a night terror.  A night terror is worse than a nightmare.  The difference:  In a night terror, you are aware that you’re sleeping and want to wake up but you are paralyzed.  Sounds like our political system, doesn’t it?

Robert DeFilippis