By: Annoyed With Things
Is it possible to be mildly happy and annoyed at the same
time? I think it is, and let me tell you
how. I am mildly happy Senator Dick
Luger (R) was beaten so handily by Richard Mourdock (R) in the Indiana Senatorial
Republican Primary. Not because I have
any particular issues with soon to be retired Sen. Luger, but rather because I
don’t think our founding fathers expected our elected officials to hang around
so long. This would have been Luger’s
seventh term – when is enough, enough?
The current system of power within Congress is based a bit
on popularity (you do have to get voted into leadership positions) and a lot on
seniority. Committee Chairmanships,
where the legislative agenda truly gets set, is based on party loyalty and seniority. The two go hand in hand because over time, as
you develop seniority, you will have plenty of opportunity to demonstrate party
loyalty with your voting record. So
everyone along the line from constituents, through the party machinery, to the
incumbents themselves all seem to have a vested interest in building a
Congressional brand. For these very same
reasons, it seems almost impossible to get a vote across party lines. The result being that we the People get stuck
with a self-supporting system biased towards incumbents party ideology rather
than reasonable compromise and forward progress. We all know it is incredibly hard to oust an
incumbent who can keep their pants on or isn’t stuffing money in their
bra. (Google Diane Wilkerson if you don’t
know what I’m talking about with the bra reference)
One of the best lines in the 2010 special Senatorial election
in Massachusetts came from Scott Brown (R) when the Democratic candidates (and
the moderator of a televised debate) referred to the open seat as the “Kennedy
Seat” inferring it belonged to the Democratic majority in Massachusetts. Brown shot back that it was the People’s seat
and got a lot of coverage and I imagine a few votes that night. My point being that career politicians become
so entrenched in the system that they become nearly impossible to beat and even
become part of the local lexicon. If you
say the words “Lion of the Senate” anywhere in New England, people will know
you mean Ted Kennedy. Look at Barney
Frank, another long serving Democrat in Congress from Massachusetts. He was voted into office in 1980 and hasn’t
left since - shame on the electorate for not wanting new blood every once in a
while and making it so hard for a challenger to win.
And before people smarmily point out the Scott Brown is a
career politician, let me point out that he also served in the Army National
Guard for over 30 years rising to the rank of Colonel – no easy task. I was an active duty person, but I had plenty
of Guard and Reserve friends who had to manage what were essentially two full
time careers. And if you don’t think
serving in the National Guard or Reserve is like a full time job – go try
it. I’m sure there is a recruiting
office near you. Additionally, if you
think Elizabeth Warren, Brown’s current Democrat challenger for the Kennedy
Seat, is not an insider you are fooling yourself. She is the worst kind of political insider,
an academic political appointee (teaches at Harvard Law – not exactly free of
the taint from the Democratic Party machine, Chairwoman of the TRAP panel, Special
assistant to the President for creation of the new Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau). You don’t get these
level appointments by just being good, you also have to be in the game for a
long time.
So my annoyance is that the system seems to be set up to
resist the infusion of new people into national elected office. I want concerned citizens, not career professional
politicians representing my interests in Congress. I want people who have done something other
than politics to represent me. I want
someone who has run a business, served in the military or was outstanding in
some other profession. This is not just
a Massachusetts issue. Take a look at
Nevada’s 1st Congressional District.
It is shaping up to be Dina Titus (D), a career politician with almost
twenty years of national and state level political history; against Chris
Edwards (R), a former Naval Officer, public administrator and homeland security
consultant. Now Ms. Titus has done many
years of teaching at UNLV while she held state office in Nevada, but she taught
American and Nevada government – not exactly a stretch for a career politician. I know, I taught at the graduate level and I can
tell you from firsthand experience it is not a huge lift to teach something you
are already intimately familiar with.
So the question is; if you had their resume without party
affiliation, who would you be more likely to pick, someone inside the system or
outside the system? Give me the military
person every time!
Editorial note: I thought
inserting this many references into the text would be disruptive. All of my assertions about specific people
are supported by the information on these pages.
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