If you haven't noticed, our Rome is burning, and leaders have been fiddling with our future.
The Democrats brought to this bonfire their pork, their "we won the election, so deal with it" attitude and junkets to the Eternal City. The Republicans ran in with their lock-step, don't-break-ranks resistance, their Emmy Award-winning diatribe on the 1,039 pages of the stimulus bill and their sneering, sanguine sanctimony.
We deserve better than this sophomoric political theater.
Look around. Empty store windows, sparsely populated parking lots and a forest of foreclosure signs are the new economic landscape in southwest Missouri. We are spending less and worrying more. For decades we have been lulled into passivity to the melodic strains of, "The American economy is sound."
Let's face it: Both political parties have been doing their own business, instead of ours.
I know nothing about the stimulus bill. I have not read one line. I outsourced that task to my elected representatives. My assumption was they would put aside their need to feather their own nests in preparation for the next election and start talking to each other about how to extinguish the coming conflagration.
How naïve! In the face of the worst economic crisis in my lifetime, it is business as usual in Washington.
I am convinced the people we have elected to represent us have forgotten about us. They have become citizens of a foreign culture ... in a far-off land. They speak in an unknown tongue that usually begins each sentence with, "this is an outrage" and ends with "elect me to end your pain."
There are three accountabilities we should insist on from those who bear the imprint of our vote.
First, how about after the banners and bluster have been boxed up, a professional politician would say, "In spite of our differences, let's find a solution here?" I know that sounds so Norman Rockwell-Jimmy Stewart-Kate Smith-ish, but why not? Second, why would it be unusual for someone on the Hill to say, "I was wrong?" I sense impervious positions are often cast in concrete off-camera, practiced in the tribal meetings and then delivered with the predictability of Hal the Computer. Who are the people in Washington who can change their minds and publicly admit their fallibility?
Third, should we not expect our national leaders to be grown-up enough that they would choose to forgo cheap shots such as continuing to question the location of our president's birthplace or demeaning the appearance of Louisiana's governor?
And how about us? What should we expect of ourselves in this murky midnight of our republic?
First, let's move away from our instantaneous demand for results.
We watch the news and then immediately switch to Bloomberg expecting the Dow Jones Index to explode with hyper-enthusiasm and gigantic numbers because someone with positional power said, "I think we are seeing the end of this tunnel."
It has taken about 30 years of mismanagement, pseudo-oversight and pathological grandiosity to get where we are today. We all knew we would pay this piper. And the sins of the father have been visited on us kids.
So turn off the stopwatch and get a grip. This financial mess is going to take a long time to correct.
Insist on long-term solutions. For years we have been handing out Band-Aids to stop our bleeding long enough to elect the next savior. Health care, Social Security and a faltering public education system all require solutions that will benefit our great grandchildren, not us.
Finally, call your representatives or senators. Tell them how you want to be represented on a particular issue in the nation's capital. Tell your legislators whether they are mirroring your priority of respect.
Find out whether legislators have morphed into political Scrooges, hunkered and fiddling in the halls of Congress - while our Rome burns.[[In-content Ad]]
Cal LeMon of Springfield-based Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting. He can be reached at execenrichment@aol.com.
