This past Wednesday’s CNN Debate offered Senator Lyndsay Graham an opportunity to express a sweeping indictment of Congress. Whether by design or by error it was refreshing to hear him admit to the reclusive value of “political capital”; that the order of the day for Republicans was to not “waste” political capital on issues that would advantage Obama and disadvantage Republicans – a tragic admission of reality in Washington, D.C. It would appear that the strategy must then be that we only fight the fights that can be won and take a pass on the ones that need fought. So much for the representative strength of conviction.
Hidden within his comment is another rarely spoken-of reality in Washington and many State and Local Governments as well. Despite the transient elected official there exists the political bureaucracy and the permanent bureaucracy both of which remain. The unelected processes and personnel expressing power and influence outside of the representative process wielding a near incomprehensible level of authority that is both ruthless as it is destructive. Then of course, lest we forget, there is the Political Two-Party Bureaucracy (as well) which splits the entire Nation along a line that is completely illusory in nature.
How can you claim to be a representative democracy when the political process excises out of the representative process an entire segment of the population not a companion to the ruling party idolatry? Is it not the case that it is “We” who “hold these truths to be self-evident?” Without question this is the fault of Congress, enacting various rules-of-order which clog the arteries of government or passing various legislative acts which include transferring regulatory-creating authority to various government agencies/departments thereby insulating themselves from the responsibility of pro-active oversight or engagement. Yet it is done with such frequency and with so comprehensive an affect that the contagion is well beyond epidemic proportions leaving Congress to claim it has insufficient “political capital” or “will” in reserve for wrestling the mess into submission.
And so, while the media-brood calls-out Candidates for their lack of “specifics”, bear in mind it is supremely irrelevant given the current climate of statist-bureaucracy where the rule is not bound or committed to perfecting the process, but instead to preserving the malignant order of a system that has bled the nation of its design. Correcting this maize of cross-purpose sludge should be among the top priorities of the next President. Debate that!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder