We Are Stuck by Al Sikes

Most of us or at least many of us are of one mind. We don’t like the choice of a national leader. Donald Trump’s baggage is well known and President Biden who bears the burden of incumbency, is at 40% approval and only 24% think he is leading the country in the right direction; at least that is how the Real Clear Politics (RCP) averages see it. While the election is six months away, the polls seem to have settled into this statistical pattern.

A foundational problem is that most voters have concluded that Washington is broken. They think that a majority of its “big deals”—the President, Vice President and leaders of Congress—are not so big. As President Biden would say, “here is the deal”; many if not most voters believe the “big deals” have connived, not earned their way to their exalted positions.

So if everybody is not up to the job, why is Trump so bad many ask? It is not the Trump of the “hush money trial,” but the former president and his four years. Or, more cynically, why is your narcissist better than ours?

The other side sees President Biden as a narcissist as well. Their argument: if Biden cannot understand why he should retire it is because he too is in some version of a narcissistic fog. The President is seen by many as a good person but not a preferred President and this is not a popularity contest.

It has been argued, more locally, that Maryland’s popular former Governor, Larry Hogan, should not be favored by right-thinking voters in the Senatorial election because his election might help the Republican Party and everything possible should be done to burn it down.

If we are going to start burning candidates on the stake of their Party affiliations, millions would say burn down both of the dominant Parties, not just their candidates. Neither Party is popular and for good reasons. Yet both, working together, have erected barriers making it damnably hard to mount a 3rd Party. The one thing they are certain about: we don’t want to share power.

I am an Independent, and if I could rebuild the two political parties, I wouldn’t. What I would do, however, is work at the State levels to make it much easier to organize and credential political parties. Not simple but easier.

Much of the dynamism of America comes from the freedom to start things. We have millions of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations that meet needs and demands with innovative responses. Organizationally we have elected and appointed officials with a mandate to protect us from monopolization. We seem to understand the importance of diffusing power.

So lets take a look at political performance within our strictly protected two party system, beginning with our immense budget deficit. The last time our fiscal accounts balanced Bill Clinton was President and Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. The last national legislator who attempted to lead us back to balance was Tom Coburn, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma; his last year in office was 2015. His was a lonely voice.

The last President to win a war was George H W Bush. He put together an impressive coalition of nations and kicked Iraq out of Kuwait, in what is known as the Gulf War. And then he brought our soldiers home. He did not attempt to remake Iraq.

The last President to leave the White House with modest wealth was Gerald Ford. Joe Biden is said to have a net worth of $9m yet he has spent his entire career receiving pay checks from governments.

I could go on. The US government does not, for example, take incremental steps to solve problems and then adapt as they learn what works or not. We begin with immense appropriations encircled by heroic language which is then protected by political expenditures.

Our national government has been better. Without an active central government Hitler would have won WWII. The next time you see a veteran salute. I would add that without farsighted action there would not be Social Security and companion health care support laws. And certainly federal civil rights laws and actions were a must. Also environmental consequences of human action or inaction cross State lines.

But we are now stuck. Money from all the special interests attached to the federal budget and government programs of one sort or another has us stuck. Washington is awash in lobbyists, lawyers, political operatives and the like whose sole purpose is to elect candidates who will do what they say. Hundreds of millions are raised to elect and reelect and keep those federally anointed advantages. This debilitating circumstance has been digested even by what pollsters call low information voters.

The 2024 election will not lead to the beginning of any real reform. Eight years of Trump and then Biden reveal the implausibility. Neither have the capacity to lead coalitions or by their popularity deliver for their Party a commanding position from which to lead. And Biden will be a lame duck from day one.

Whew! Yes I know I have offended almost everybody. I, too, am offended. Even at my advanced age I am looking forward to the years to come.  Hoping, hoping that I can cast a ballot that will reflect well on our veterans. They have saved us, the free world, and deserve our courageous best.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.