Thanks to Lazerlupine for the following:
It is the midterms, the halftime of the Obama Presidency. It is the time when coaches take their teams to the locker room and make adjustments to their strategies. It is the time for the politicians to assess whether their ideas and beliefs are working in the real world, or if they need a little pragmatic adjustment. In my estimation, the crowd is stomping their feet and demanding some major adjustments.
The Left feels they have been sold a bill of goods because many of their positions on worker’s rights and social justice haven’t been addressed. The Right feels that the controlling party is over regulating the economy, growing the public sector and is obsessed on taxing the rich. And both sides seem to want to saddle the other with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guess what? You’re all right. Unfortunately being right and getting everything you want are worlds apart.
The 111th Congress started out as a supermajority with basically unlimited control over the agenda and a President of the same party spurring them on to pass his plan. We have seen how the animosity and stubborn environment of contention has resulted in Legislation that most of the nation rejects. I suggest that a super majority feels empowered to roll over their counterparts because they can, whether it is wise or not. In my opinion, supermajorities are to be avoided because they try to violently upset the balance of systems that have evolved over time.
I believe the Founding Fathers in their zeal to create a form of Government that would withstand the test of time took examples from social and physical laws, as they understood them at the time, and tried to structure the government with these laws in mind. Create a system to encourage majority rule and minority rights, compromise over gridlock, and balance and stability in all facets of our Government. There are times that social issues and other external forces offset our balance and threaten our stability. When this happens, it is up to us to regain equilibrium in a way we design. Otherwise balance will find it’s own equilibrium (Usually with unintended consequences)
My sincere hope is that the midterms will result in a change in House leadership, a rearrangement of the Senate leadership, and a very loud, vocal public, demanding an atmosphere of working together to achieve, not everything you want, but everything you need for a reasonable amount of taxes. Division is a radical mismatch of our expectations and is a danger to our overall stability. There is too much we agree on. It is time for some team players to get us on the winning path again.
