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by Don Azarias
December 25, 2010
This is always a fact of life in politics not only in the United States but throughout the world: Every time there’s a change of occupants in both, White House and Capitol Hill, those incoming politicians from either major parties always arrive pompously with overblown fanfare that they don’t deserve. Of course, before they won their seats they tried to outdo one another during their grandiose campaigns largely financed by Wall Street, Political Action Committees (PACs) or Political Interest Groups (PIGs) and other special interest groups that are expecting paybacks once their candidates are elected.
Those candidates, with outsized egos, will promise the gullible voters the moon and the stars just to get themselves elected. But, fulfilling what they’ve promised is another thing because, most of the time, they don’t deliver what they promised. Some of the most common promises politicians make to voters include: Improving the economy, providing jobs and healthcare for everyone and remaking the workings of the government by streamlining its operations, improving efficiency and balancing the budget by eliminating fat and waste in all federal government agencies including the military establishment.
There’s a greater chance that the economy will likely be the decisive issue in the 2012 elections which, if I may remind you, include the presidential election. The economy, I believe, will still be the topic of discussion by the opposing political parties which also include the Tea Party. If President Barack Obama and the Democrats were unable to turn the economy around two years before the presidential election, I could almost guarantee that we will have a newly-elected Republican president and a Republican-dominated congress come 2012. It’s really a win-win political situation for the GOPs because in the voters’ minds, Obama and his Democratic allies had their chance but were unable to make their promise of “change we can believe in” a reality.
With the unemployment rate hovering at 10 percent and the housing market still depressed and the unrelenting home foreclosures on the rise, Obama will have a difficult time convincing the voters that he deserves a second term as president of the United States.
I’m also inclined to believe that the American voters have grown tired of both, Republican’s and Democrat’s executive and legislative leadership. They feel that the the government just keeps monkeying around with the nation’s economy with nothing to show for it. So for the next two years, there will be the usual political posturing and bickering among those politicians in Washington. Consequently, they won’t be able to accomplish anything or handle those important issues that the American people so desperately need. The economy will still be weak and the national debts and deficits, characterized by the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, as “unsustainable”, will still remain unresolved. The American people, once again, will lose their faith, for the umpteenth time, in their political leaders’ ability to run this great country.
I also have a feeling that, two years from now, the economy will be the same as it is now. Then, once again, Democrats, Republicans and Tea Partiers will keep attacking one another for the country’s malaise as they present their party’s 2012 presidential candidates and their running mates to the voters. Obama and the congressional members will be busy with their campaigns that issues of national importance will be relegated to the back burner by the White House and by Capitol Hill as candidates from opposing parties slug it out to the bitter end.
Those highly-paid political consultants and advisers hired by each political party will formulate their strategies to, once again, attract the ever-gullible American voters. Like Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, the candidate who will be judged as the best speaker with the help of the teleprompter wins the election. And, once again, the American voters are conned. They always end up getting the shaft. Then, midway through the incumbent president’s term, the disappointed voters will start calling for his head. The voters will also call for those incumbent lawmakers’ heads.
Then a newly-minted presidential candidate from each political party will emerge and will be proclaimed as the Messiah waiting to be crowned in the next presidential election. And the American voters, with incredibly short memory, will elect him to the nation’s highest office. The voters will also elect or reelect those congressional lawmakers. It will mark the start of a new era, again, for the umpteenth time.
And the beat goes on.