The 110th Congress was perhaps the most polarized, do nothing Congress in recent history. Unfortunately for America, the same line-up of leadership is present in the 111th Congress. In my view, there is a more apparent lack of leadership in the Senate, than the House of representatives.
First, you have to look at the length of time these Senators serve. Byrd has reached the half century mark, Kennedy is three years behind, and many more have been in office for decades. There is an old saying that " a fish stinks from the head down. The next opportunity to vote out incumbents is 2010. The mentality of "the Congress is broken, but it's not my representative or senator" somehow has got to be changed. The message that, your own representative and senator are a part of the problem and should be voted out, needs to be sounded throughout the country. Our country has reached a watershed moment in history and depending on the actions taken by our representatives may well define our future or a lack of a future at all.
In many cases legislation that passes the House gets lost in the Senate. Any Senator can place a "secret hold" on legislation. This is not democracy when a single Senator can hold the entire country hostage because his or her beliefs are not aligned with the interests of the American people, but rather some special or self interest.
It is also my view that Senators, on a regular basis, do not meet their constitutional obligations which they are sworn to uphold. In to many serious issues they have passed the baton to the executive branch, commerce, war powers, the very definition of defense, the secrecy surrounding their interactions with the intelligence community. The concept of checks and balances has gone out the window.
Another obvious truth is that Senators begin their next campaign, right after re-election. this necessitates hooking up with special interests for money. You give to me & I give to you. The "people" seldom cross their minds, unless they are back home touting the bacon/pork they have brought. Where to start to correct this situation, again in my view, is with the leadership in the Seanate, or lack thereof. Senator Harry Reid does not have much of a view beyond his homestate of Nevada. He is one of the most lackluster leaders, I have ever seen. He weilds no power and the Republican minority seem to easily bulldoze over him and get billions for their pet projects in return for their votes. The Democrats need to take a stand now. Remove Harry Reid as Majority leader and perhaps replace him with someone like a Senator Testor or A Senator Webb or anyone with some kind of guts and allegiance to the constitution and American people.
The Republican leader Senator McConnell also should go. He is more interested in playing partisan politics. Again, I question his motives. He did not get sent back to the Senate with resounding support of the people of Kentucky. He just squeaked by a loss. Yet he returns as if he has some kind of mandate, somehow annointed. What is clear, he would be much better suited to be the chair of the rnc, than a Senator. How do you replace the leadership at this point. Pressure the democratic and republican caucuses, use an email campaign, get the word out to various groups and get momentum going. It is worth a shot and I will be interested in reading comments on this article, to get a sense of how many others agree with this, as well as possible variations on the theme.
Bob Henry/Maine
Bob Interesting article. It seems we have come full circle from the days when the Governor of the state picked the Senators. We have the same problem that faced the people back then. The Senators are not responsive to the will of the people. Seems to me it all comes down to money. The more you support the election campaign with money the more "ear time" you get to influence the Senator and their vote. To bad only corporations get the ear time.
I have to agree the dems leadership in the Senate lacks the will to succeed and seems to be outmaneuvered most of the time by the repubs. I was one of the people that helped to re-elect Reed the last time he was up for re-election, BTW, and he was voted back in because the other guy was even more beholden to the destruction of the government than Reed. His performance as Majority leader is lackluster and I often wonder if some repub has pictures of him with underage kids. The one constant is he will back down from a confrontation at first opportunity. His handling of the Burris issue showed his inability to grasp the real issue and opt for the politically correct approach to the problem IMHO.
Their just isn't enough choice when it comes to selecting the best at the voting booth. Seems the 3rd parties are to busy running for president and don't have the time to bother with these other offices.
Bob,
There is 'should' and then there is 'reality'. Voters should routinely replace their representatives when the results of government disappoint voters. The reality however, is that American voters have been conditioned to switch parties if government is deemed a near total failure, and stay with the same party's incumbents if their lives are tolerable.
2006 and 2008 were anti-incumbent election years in the U.S. These elections booted out the GOP as the governing majority party and replaced it with the Democratic Party. Americans are conditioned to think switching duopoly party labels when contemplating voting out bad government.
Organization of the Dem. and GOP parties is how they afford to get their vote incumbent message to the people. Because the educational movement of Vote Out Incumbents Democracy is virtually unfunded compared to the duopoly parties, acquiring support away from the duopoly parties will be a slow and very arduous task. Americans don't like slow. But, that is the reality.
Your message is exactly right. And the numbers of supporters of voting out incumbents is growing with each election cycle. Keeping the logic and rationale for voting out incumbents, IN ORDER to improve government, is paramount for our children's and nation's future. I commend your article and voice on this matter. Keep your voice in the public venue on this. That is how ideas become movements, changing history.
j2t2,
There are events in history that alter history from that day forth. Pearl Harbor, The Gettysburg Address, 9/11, and the murder of the 3 civil rights workers in Alabama, for example.
Nearly everyone is changed by such events eventually because their culture changed as well, and we all live and respond to our culture.
I am waiting to see how many incumbent Democrats in the Congress recognize and embrace the historical change that was marked on Nov. 20 of last year with the election, not of Democrats, but, of Barack Obama.
Barack Obama is unlike any presidential candidate that has run before, and he was elected in unprecedented times of peril. Such combination can result in a truly great president, not without flaws and errors, but, one whose abilities were matched to the challenges of his/her day and time.
If, and I grant you, it is a big if, the elected Democrats in the Congress largely follow Obama's lead in addressing our perils without reverting back to yesterday's political priorities, America may actually discover that she has circumvented the worst of times and opened a door for our children and grandchildren which may lead them to a fuller realization of the ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence.
It is hard to see such a path to the future when peril and challenges are mounting at every turn. And, Obama, or the Democrats, or the American people, or the international community, or some combination thereof, may prevent the United States from ever reaching that door onto the future. But, where hope is alive, the will to support moving in that direction remains alive, as well.
Without hope of achievement, achievement is not even endeavored.
Maybe there is a political reason that they put such a weak Senator as Henry Reid as Majority Leader. Maybe they put him in because they did not want the Democratic to seem to controlling and unmovable. If they had not put in a Senator that was easily “run over” they would look too much like a “big government”. I do agree that Dems should take a stand but it might cause too much upheaval and unrest among the people if all of a sudden the only issues/bills being passed are the ones on the Democratic agenda.
Seven former CIA directors are asking President Barack Obama to immediately shut down Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigation into harsh CIA interrogations of terror suspects during the Bush administration. The request came in a letter Friday authored jointly by all three of the CIA directors who served under George W. Bush, and signed by four of their predecessors.
What’s ironic is that former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a man accused of politicizing the Justice Department and authorizing interrogation tactics that some say led to detainee abuses, praised and supports Holder’s investigation of the CIA. Now, Gonzales wouldn’t be looking at this as a way to take some of the spotlight off the investigations in HIS alleged wrong-doings, would he?
Richard Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor leading the international inquiry, is to issue the report ahead of the Council’s debate set for Sept. 29.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, called Holder’s investigation, a “gross waste of time” and “nothing more than ghost-chasing and puppet theater.” In an impromptu statement off camera outside the ABC studios Sunday morning, Cheney said Holder “isn’t smart enough to investigate a set of lost car keys.”
So … all the men chiefly responsible for misbehavior, civil and constitutional rights violations, human rights violations, and a massive conspiracy to cover their involvement are all claiming this investigation is “hogwash” and are trying to get it stopped.
Now why do you suppose that might be …?