Sunday, May 23, 2010 | 2 a.m.
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Reading the election tea leaves ...
By now, we have heard from every pundit, political expert and amateur strategist who has an opinion about American politics in 2010. And what we have heard is a great deal of fulmination with little illumination. I am not sure I can add a whole lot to the discussion, which should make me a bit reluctant to try. But ...
What did we learn from last Tuesday’s election results? That depends, of course, on whom you are asking and what his particular agenda is. Fortunately, I don’t have a political agenda when it comes to places like Kentucky or Pennsylvania. But let’s take the Bluegrass State, for example.
I love that state’s horse tracks and rolling green hills. I love the fact that I spent a very meaningful part of my young life at Fort Knox. And I love the fact that my friend Dan Chandler was from Kentucky and loved that state dearly. Beyond that, though, I am a dispassionate observer.
And what I observed in Rand Paul’s shellacking of his Republican senatorial opponent in Kentucky is the same thing I see across the country. People are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore! Just like in the movies. But, unlike the movies, voters’ actions have consequences, the kind that are often unforeseen and, for certain, unwanted.
Who doesn’t understand that Americans are angry? We are scared, and we want some control over our lives that we have ceded to others, only to be let down by those who should have known better and done better on our behalf. It gets pretty simple.
For example, who was watching the Wall Street Gang when our money, our jobs and our retirement accounts disappeared? Many people say they despise government interference in our financial lives, but it is hard to distinguish them from those who wonder where the government was when the thieves were making off with our futures. Now everyone is looking for someone to blame.
People like Paul are merely channeling that anger into a political opportunity to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.
That it is Kentucky we are talking about makes it easier to take with a grain of salt because if it were happening here, I would be very concerned.
Wait a minute, this kind of opportunism is happening here, so it is important that we all understand at whom we are mad and how to soothe the angry beast within us. Unlike Kentucky, Nevada stands to lose a great deal if the people who voted for Paul have their way with Nevada.
Let’s get past the economic meltdown for just a minute — even though doing so takes herculean focus because that failure by government, by Wall Street and by “we the people” to protect those of us who did nothing wrong seems far too little and much too late. We trusted our government to watch our backs and it failed us. That’s why we are so hopping mad!
Let’s consider, though, the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico and the generational devastation likely to result all because BP did the expedient, cost-efficient thing and our government, the entity that was supposed to protect us against capitalistic excess (call that greed), failed to do its job. People will lose their livelihoods and their families as a result of our being too lazy, too ignorant of the facts or just too incompetent as citizens to demand that government do what government is supposed to do.
It is possible that much of the seafood that feeds America will disappear from grocery shelves for many years. If that happens, the price will skyrocket and the rest of the world, the poorer part that lives primarily from the sea, will be that much worse off. All because an oil company got too greedy and our government was complicit in that effort.
Of course we have good reason to be mad!
The question, though, is what to do with our anger. How do we turn our frustration into a positive force for our democracy and ensure that what we assume government is supposed to do for us is actually done?
There is something else we need to consider as citizens wishing to do our best at the ballot box. Think about how many decisions each of us has made while we were angry. I may be the exception, but I would suggest that almost every decision I made in anger was the wrong one. Those based on reflection, on facts and on cooled-down consideration were far more successful. We owe it to ourselves and our fellow Americans to vote from a place of sanity because the alternative always produces a consequence not only unintended but often untenable.
Voting for candidates for Senate, House, governorships, council seats or any other position in public life is about filling a job. After we have made ourselves “feel good” by casting a vote, the winner must get up and go to work. We have a responsibility to elect people who can actually do the work, just like any other job.
That means they need experience, brains, an ability to get things done and a sense of how to find common ground that’s necessary to achieve success in a democracy. Electing someone who is not qualified almost always creates a situation far worse than re-electing someone who is competent but with whom we disagree.
You may not agree with me now, but you will later — when you calm down enough to cast a vote in your own best interests. I hope for all our sakes that time comes before the November election.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
