Political Heroes

And my second posting for this morning... I have a new newsman hero, a gentleman named Jack Cafferty. He is a regular contributor to CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer", and for those of you who accuse me of only liking left-leaning newsmen, he leans to the right.

But what he also has is a love of this country first, a love of conservative principles second, and a love of partisanship so low it doesn't even register on the charts. And so he is willing to argue in favor of Democrats winning the next election because he perceives (as I do) that our nation is in trouble and heading for the rocks.

But there are two keys to why he's my newest hero.

First, I heard him speaking on the very liberal Stephanie Miller show the other day. She is very fond of him, because he speaks out against the current Administration and Congress as being neither conservative nor good for America. As a result, for this political season anyway, they are essentially on the same team (the enemy of my enemy being my friend and all that), and so she often quotes him on her show.

Well, on the morning in question, he was actually a guest on the show to promote a new CNN special (more on that later). He was decrying some of the acts of this President and this Congress and she took that and used it as a statement in support of the Democratic party, and he said something like "But why would I support the Democrats? They're ALL(*) weasels." Score one for Jack Cafferty. They are more or less all weasels. The sooner more people realize that neither party is really supporting their base or their supposed principles any more (if they ever were), the sooner we can figure out how to get them to work to the benefit of America in spite of their baser natures, rather than by appealing to them.

(* In context, it was clear that ALL referred to all politicians, not all Democrats.)

So, that comment made me seek out the CNN special "Broken Government with Jack Cafferty" that he was plugging. By the way, if you go looking for it, you should be aware that there is also a CNN regular series called "Broken Government", which seems kind of stupid, but there you go. If the show that pops up when you go to watch it doesn't start with Jack Cafferty sitting at a desk quoting a bumper sticker with the words "Had Enough?", you've got the series, not the special.

Anyway, the special itself was nothing, er, special, at least for me. Perhaps for someone who hasn't been paying daily attention to the political situation it would be a good recap of where we are, but for me, it was just a recitation, a list without much in depth reporting behind it.

However, at one point Mr. Cafferty did make one suggestion that I think was a really good one, except that in practice it'll probably never work: We should not, as a nation, be voting for or against a political party, but against establishment. I don't mean this in a 1960's counter-culture sense, I mean what better way to send a message to our entire government than to send all of the incumbents packing, lock stock and ineffectual barrel.

I have no idea which party this would ultimately serve, based on percentages it would probably leave control of the Congress in Republican hands (but I haven't counted the races to know for sure). But it would send in the strongest possible terms the message that the citizens of the United States are fed up and won't tolerate "business as usual" any more.

There are reasons why this wouldn't work, of course. It would require the people of this nation working in concert, something very difficult to do in this political climate and worse (at least for those who would be voting against their own party) it would require trust that everyone ELSE was going to follow the plan as well.

Still, as Mr. Cafferty said, it is my fervent wish that all of the incumbents, every single one of them, loses on election day. Maybe then, just maybe, we could finally start the long slow process of turning the Titanic around BEFORE it hits the 'berg.

Liam.