Apples to Apples

Janet and I spent much of the day yesterday in the car driving for various reasons which are immaterial to this post. As often happens when we take long trips, we spent some time listening to various radio "podcasts" on the MP3 player through the car's radio, pausing playback occasionally to discuss what we were hearing.

One of many radio shows we listen to with some regularity is the nationally syndicated Stephanie Miller show. She is extremely liberal, but we do not listen for the ideological content. She is also a stand up comedian and the daughter of Barry Goldwater's VP running mate, Senator William Miller. None of which matters, we just listen to her because she (or more often, her impressionist sidekick Jim Ward) is really funny, and regularly has us chuckling as we listen. About once a week she and her team come out with a line or a skit that has us fully laughing out loud.

Anyway, one thing that frustrates me about the more political aspects of her show is that she is not a particularly good interviewer. She is clearly enamored of the sound of her own voice, and finds it difficult not to hear it at least every few seconds, which doesn't generally give those she interviews time to express their OWN views. She also likes to frame questions in ways that make clear that she already believes she knows the answer and is just expecting the guest to confirm it.

So suffice it to say, I don't listen to her show for the interviews. But yesterday as Janet and I were driving along, on the playback she was interviewing Lou Dobbs, in an interview which pretty well mirrored her interview of a few days before of Jack Cafferty (see my blog posting of earlier today), in that she only wanted to hear his disgust at the current President and Congress, but not his support for conservative philosophies (Lou Dobbs, in any honest consideration of the ideological spectrum, falls clearly to the right of center).

I paused the playback and suggested that what I really felt was wrong with her interview style was that although she fervently believed what she was saying, she never stopped to consider that she was not comparing apples to apples. She was comparing the Democratic party as defined by its ideals to the Republican party as defined by the behavior of the current leaders of the party. As more and more honest conservatives come forward and say "What the heck has become of my party?", it is clear that the likes of George Will, Jack Cafferty, Lou Dobbs and other intelligent people of a conservative bent are rejecting this President and this Congress not on party lines, but because they (the politicians) are not living by true conservative principles. And so the actions of those politicians clearly do not equate to the philosophies espoused by supporters of their party.

On making this observation, Janet said that she felt it was a very succinct description of what is wrong with political debate in this country: Defining your own party by the ideals of its supporters and the other party by the behavior of its candidates.

So let's be clear here. As I've said all along, I support some aspects of both the liberal and conservative PHILOSOPHIES. And I have little but contempt for most politicians of both Democratic and Republican stripe. If you ever catch me advocating for one party on its principles while demonizing the other on its actions, please call me on it. Because I don't honestly believe the current Democratic candidates deserve to win on merit. The Republican candidates (or at least the incumbents) deserve to lose for abrogating their checking and balancing responsibilities as a co-equal branch of the United States government.

I want the Democrats to take control of one or both houses of Congress not for their sake, but for America's. We, the people they in Washington work for, have a right to be proud of our nation and to know that it is strong and good. So long as the influence of power corrupts, and the influence of our money equals votes political campaigns corrupts even more, we will always have primarily weasels in government at the Federal level.

If they're going to be weasels, then at least let them expend most of their weasel effort on trying to outfox each other, rather than on swindling us of our proud heritage and strong future.

And remember that your morality and your philosophies do not automatically conflate onto the members of your party who pay lip service to them. For the most part, they're all a batch of lying weasels, telling us what we want to hear so we'll elect them.

If we fall for it, from either side, we lose.

Liam.

P.S. Yes, I recognize that earlier today I said I'd be happier if we sent a message by tossing out ALL of the incumbents, even if that left Republicans in control, and from a purely philosophical standpoint, I still agree. However, I also said in that post that there were a number of reasons I didn't think that an acheivable outcome, and I also think politicians can spin away any actual message we send them, in the age of considering a half-of-one-percent victory a "mandate". And so while I'd love to see a clear message sent to Congress, I believe that the path more likely to lead to some reigning in of our out-of-control Federal government is good, old-fashioned partisan bickering, and so at this late date, I'm sticking with hoping the Dems can take the Congress. The rest is just wishful dreaming.