A Political Comment

Just listened to President Bush respond to the political fallout arising from the firing of 8 U.S. Attorney's and in particular to the demands of the Democratic led Senate for White House Staff to appear and provide testimony under oath or else they may very well issue subpoenas. President Bush called it a "partisan fishing expedition" and made it clear he would make every attempt to block subpoenas should they be issued. Hmmmmmmm. Does this President sound like the guy in the White House back in the early 70's? Does this war feel like a war we were fighting back in the early 70's? Is this President going to spend the final 21 months of his administration embattled and at odds with the legislative branch of our government? Have we, the people, lost all sense of reality as we continue our daily lives as if none of these issues really matter? What does it say when more people called in to vote for the two finalists on American Idol last season than participated in the last general election?

At the end of the day I don't know if there really is a fire around all the smoke flowing out of this story and on at least one level I don't think I care because the term of the appointment is entirely discretionary. These attorneys serve at the convenience of the President, which means that he can fire them at any time and for any reason. I'm not certain I get the point that the Democrat's are making with allegations of them being fired for political reasons. Hell, they are political appointees and while perhaps it isn't fair or just, it is within the construct of the legislation that served to create the appointments. Moreover, if memory serves, there have political firings throughout the course of our history and some were quite famous; e.g.: Archibald Cox in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre (gosh, there goes that early 70's analogy again).

What does disturb me is that we have serious issues facing this country. A war in a foreign land where our young men and women are dying everyday. A war that no one seems to be able to find a way out of without creating even more instability, both in Iraq and potentially across the entire region. We have a housing market that is poised to crash around our proverbial ears. Our government has created a national debt that our grandchildren will be paying in years to come. We have essentially no political credibility on a global basis and our children cannot get decent health care across much of the nation. I don't care if 8 U.S. Attorney's lost their jobs for failing to investigate Democrats or because they were investigating Republicans. I do care that our three branches of government would appear to be dysfunctional at the moment and that the vast majority of the American people would appear to be apathetic about the entire situation.

I don't usually get very political unless of course I'm hanging out with my brothers Joe and Jim and then I do it just it just to watch the fireworks. But listening to our President this evening and to the members of the Legislative Branch who commented afterwards, I can't help but feel we need a grass roots movement on an unprecedented scale to take back control of this country. I think you could probably take the whole bunch of them and throw them all out and replace them with some intelligent middle-level managers from a cross-section of industries and get a much better result. I'm not a big fan of Neal Boortz, but he threw out some stats this morning on his radio show about government spending over the past 6+ years that were astonishingly frightening in terms of the dollars being spent.

I guess I'm saying that I recognize that I have to take personal responsibility for getting involved in changing the current state of affairs and I hope that you will do the same. I think we are all going to have to get involved if we what to find true north again.