On Wednesday morning Ted Swartz wrote...
Ok, Jim---the change has been made. It's still early in VA, but it appears Allen is out; isn't that what this election has been about---getting "them" out. I do wonder if the reasons go deep enough, but does it matter?
TKSwartz
I think it does matter how deep the reasons go.
I don't think this election was about getting them out. I think it was about opening the government back up – getting us back in.
All the new Congress has to do is insist on including members of the minority in committee meetings and it will do better than the ones that came before. Think of it . . . over the last six years Republicans routinely excluded Democrats – duly elected by the people of the United States – from committee meetings. I would join the chorus of those screaming bloody murder if Democrats committed that kind of abuse of power.
I expect a whole lot more in the way of good faith from the new Congress. A whole lot more.
Wednesday, Garrison Keillor ended his column with this:
You meet congressmen in private and they're perfectly thoughtful and well-spoken people, nothing like the raging idiots they impersonate in campaign ads, and you think, maybe Congress needs more privacy. Send them off on unchaperoned trips to see the world firsthand. More closed-door caucuses where they can say what they think without worrying that one stray phrase may kill them.
Or maybe Congress simply needed more Democrats. We are a civil bunch, owing to our contentious upbringings. With a smart, well-spoken woman for speaker instead of that lumbering mumbling galoot who covered for the Current Occupant, perhaps the sauce will thicken and life will get more interesting. Maybe they'll do something good. It's possible.
— Garrison Keillor, Living on Hope, Salon.com, 11.08.06
2 comments:
I still think this country needs a strong third party. I like the idea of forming The Small Business Party. It could be made up of the millions of hard working small business owners and employees that are the heart and soul of America. We will need a presidential type with good looks, a square jaw and a military service record who became a pie baker or something.
A square-jawed baker of pies . . . i like it.
The founders expressed no hope that politics would not slide from time to time toward the abuse of power and the American people have yet prove them wrong about that for very many years in a row.
I suspect we'll sooner see the Joe Lieberman effect replicated than the formation of a sustainable third party. Which might be just fine if such people were to coalesce around things that really matter.
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