Post Election thoughts
Well, it’s over. Unless something really, really big happens, President-Elect Obama won and we’ll be seeing some changes next year. I’ve seen a few posts lamenting the loss of “bipartisanship” here and there, and it got me thinking. I’m not innately in support of bipartisanship, but only because I’m not innately in support of partisanship. When I vote, I do my best to vote for the people I feel will best represent me and the ideas I feel to be contributing to good government, whatever party those people may affiliate with. I don’t vote for a party. Bipartisanship becomes desireable, to me, only when candidates loyalty to their parties outweighs their loyalty to their constituents. When that happens, bipartisanship doesn’t solve the problem, it just helps put the brakes on it for a while. It helps ensure that fewer things get done, period, and thus there’s less chance of bad things getting done. I’d much rather have elected representatives that represent me. For some silly reason, I thought that’s what the American system of government was designed to realize.
Yeah, yeah. It’ll be a long, long time before it’s really that way, but I really do feel like party-loyalty is at the root of a lot of the things that made the last 8 years so disastrous.
Here’s to hoping that President-Elect Obama, and all our other elected officials, can manage to pull away from that paradigm a bit, and get back to doing what they were elected to do: representing the people.
It’s not so much which party is in control, it’s the darn under the table party dealing that scares me. It seems like too many representatives forget what the word “represent” means.
I’ll raise a glass to your hope as well.
Nice post. Thank you for the info. Keep it up.
Hi! I’m am trying to find my darling mission companion Melissa Mellen! I THINK she’s married to you…Gosh, I hope so, otherwise this really wierd for you! I hope you read these comments, b/c I have NO other idea how to work this thing, and I can’t find her on facebook, and I don’t have an email address! I’m DESPERATE!! Please please please have her email me!
I finally set a facebook account after many people requested me as a friend but I couldn’t respond without a facebook account. So here I sit instead of studying my math homework I stumbled on your thoughts through a link on facebook. President Obama is not my guy but I hope for the best but I’m not expecting much. He is young (not that there is anything wrong with that) and has already made some poor appointments and appears to be playing the political game as all the others do. I guess a plus for him though is the fact that he has appointed a couple of republicans. At least a move toward bipartisanship. He is going to have a hard time doing that no matter what his intent with the congress the way it is. I’m old enough to remember President Jimmy Carter and how useless he was. If President Obama is at the very least more effective than he was then all will not be lost. Well good luck with your studies. Dad