More fundamental flaws in the American political system – Short sightedness
American voters are the ultimate band wagon jumpers. Their opinions are very easily swayed from left to right depending on how they feel at that moment. You might find a person voting for a president who is a Democrat one year and then voting for his Republican opponent four years later. The average person will say that this is a strength of our political system. In some respects I agree. Yet, I find myself realizing that the reason a voter would do this is because they haven’t really given enough thought to the underlying fundamental principles that each party stands for.
If you actually spend the necessary time learning about the underlying fundamental principles, you quickly find yourself leaning to one side or another on a more permanent basis. This is why you have the diehards voting for a straight ticket according to party line. I think it is nearly impossible for a reasonable intelligent person not to find themselves solidly disagreeing with one party or the other. This is exactly what happened to me when I was in college. That is why I decided to declare my membership to the Republican Party.
It is late spring in 2009 as I write this. Our country is still in the middle of this economic crisis that has caused the unemployment rate to rise and investment fortunes to be eroded. Of course this entire financial mess has been blamed on so called failed policies of the Bush(43) administration’s policies. People who claim that obviously don’t understand economics or the banking system. You see, the underlying reason that we got into this mess has far more to do with the policies of Alan Greenspan who chaired the Federal Reserve for many years prior to the Bush(43) presidency. I will readily admit that George W. Bush was way too ideological in his push to increase home ownership to record numbers. Alan Greenspan was also wrong in encouraging Wall Street to come up with new ways to finance consumers’ borrowing for real estate loans.
Although George W Bush’s policies added fuel to the fire, they were put in place because he thought they were in the long term best interests of our country. He was proven wrong on this front. But, it was his methods of increasing home ownership rates that were proven wrong. The underlying idea of governing based on the long term best interests of our nation was and still is right on target. This is why I disagree with the majority of the Democrat’s fiscal policies. They are just too short sighted.
Wisdom comes with age. As we grow older, we begin to understand how the world really works and how the shortsightedness of some of our decisions when we were younger have hurt us. Think about the kid who gets a full time job right out of high school instead of going to college. At the moment, it seems like the smart thing to do. It is in fact in his best interests, short term. He is earning money and accumulating wealth instead of getting himself into debt like all of those college kids. But inevitably, some years later, he realizes it was a major blunder in the grand scheme of life. He gets hit with the giant epiphany that it was a ridiculously short sighted decision.
This is the exact same thing that you see happening in American presidential elections. It happened with Bill Clinton. The people were quick to elect him because he was charismatic. He promised immediate prosperity under his leadership. What he didn’t tell the American people is that ultimately they would have to pay very dearly for this eight year party. His drastic cuts in our national intelligence agencies eventually may have resulted in us preventing the 911 attacks. We will never know for sure. His insistence that Alan Greenspan keep his foot on the accelerator of the American economy led to the internet bubble. The corrective policies that Greenspan enacted to soften the bubble bursting eventually led to the very economic crisis we are dealing with right now. (Duh!) If these economists are so damn smart and Greenspan was such a great maestro, how come he didn’t see that one coming? He didn’t see it coming because he was being short sighted.
There is always a price to pay for being short sighted. Capitalism works best with as little government intervention as possible. Recessions are a necessary part of the business cycle. If you are going to have booms, then you have got to have busts. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Recessions are absolutely necessary to weed out the excesses of the previous cycles. You simply cannot have one without the other. The American people need to learn this lesson. This is why you should not live beyond your means. It is very short sighted. Ultimately you will be made to pay. It is not governments fault. It is your own damn fault. I liken it to a man eating chicken wings, pizza and beer every night for five years and then being dumbfounded at the amount of weight he has gained. Duh! If you are going to go on eating binges, at some point you will have to go on a restrictive diet to lose the weight. Otherwise, you will get increasingly fatter until you have a heart attack, diabetes, cancer, etc…..
American voters are more short-sighted now than ever as far as I can remember. That is how Obama got elected. Their utter lack of understanding of our economy has led them to be fooled by the power hungry Democrat power mongers who lust for control of this great nation. One thing is certain. The policies of these Democrats will exacerbate the very problems that America elected them to fix. The policies of the Democrats are short sighted and not in the long term best interests of our nation. They appear good in the short run. Their long term damaging effects are being ignored. One day, in the not so distant future, Americans will begin to realize this.
America needs to somehow convince its voters to really stop and think about these issues with a long-term perspective. If we could accomplish that, we would see a return to morality, lower taxes and fiscal spending restraints. All of these things are in the long term best interests of a capitalist society. All of these things lead to a life of greater prosperity and better living standards for everyone. Isn’t that what we all really want? If only we had the discipline to stick to it.
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people..They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” Thomas Jefferson