In a Barbara Walters interview yesterday President Obama said he would rather have an effective single term than hope for two mediocre terms in office. He went on to say that many politicians feel their job description is to get re-elected and spend correspondingly less time on the business at hand.
We seem to be in the age of professional politicians now, men and women whose "job" is to keep their job rather than to represent the electorate who put them there. I am no student of political science which I consider to be an oxymoron anyway, but I thought representative government was supposed to reflect the wishes of the people.
Yet the founding fathers were all wealthy and educated, not farmers who volunteered a month a year to serve in Congress as some idealists dreamed. How could they? Most colonists had no education at all, not to mention the time and broadness of mind to dream up a form of government and write a constitution.
So how can we have "representatives" who truly do what the word means? In the pure sense a congressperson from Georgia would oppose taxing tobacco for example, despite worldwide evidence that tobacco use is harmful. He is after all, representing his constituency ___ the voters who elected him. This apparently is where we get all the pork in the current health reform bill (and most legislation).
I applaud Obama for saying what he did. His candor is the biggest reason I voted for him. FDR was in a similar situation and faced similar challenges. Many of his programs didn't work either, but in both cases they tried. They acted. And without a proactive leader I'm not sure that our economy would not have slid further into trouble.
The main thing I would like to hope for at this point I think, is to quit the party bickering and get down to business. Address the issues, not the electibility. Stop voting in party blocks and get back to representing Main Street. We were doing that before, weren't we?
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