Bipartisan Lunacy

Though I still consider myself an idealist, and somethinng of a hopeless romantic, these days I never cease to be amazed by the lunatics of both political parties. From my chair, it looks like the Democrats are doing everything they can to make the Republicans look good; in fact, anyone with a short-enough memory might forget that the Republicans spent much of the last ten years destroying the myth that they were the party of "fiscal responsibility." I think they may well be messing up a once-in-a-generational chance to effect a tidal shift in US politics: figuring that power is of no use if they can't abuse it, they seem intent on shutting out the GOP from any real involvement in trying to figure a way through our current economic troubles, and are insisting on doing things their own way. If I'm right about the likely course of the economy for the next fiver or ten years---and what we're facing is more like 1932 than 1982---then they're likely to own the economic mess that's coming, whether or not they had the power to prevent it. And just like most people have forgotten (or never actually knew) about the Dems' complicity in the meltdown, if things keep getting worse they're likely to forget about the role the GOP played in letting everything spiral out of control. After all, the Republicans' sins of the recent past merely involved bungling a war and squandering hundreds of billions of dollars. The new Democratic Adminstration started out by moving a deciminal point out an additional level on the deficit, and they seem intent on making blunders of their own throughout the rest of the world.

All in all, I 'm starting to wonder if we'd be better off selecting our "elected leaders" by lottery, rather than electing them. We certainly don't seem to be doing such a bang-up job of picking them out by ourselves. Despite my high hopes from Obama, he now seems bent on consorting with the lunatics of his own party. And I'm starting to wonder whether random chance might not at least give us a chance of putting someone in charge with a grown-up's sense of responsibility.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.