I spent the last several days working on documenting a sizable loan transaction on behalf of a long time client. My instructions from the client were to get it closed “while we still have banks to close a deal with.” This comment seemed funny to me when I first heard it, but given the events of the past few weeks and the failure of Congress to act on a bailout package yesterday, I have to wonder if it has some actual merit.
The most amazing thing of all is Congress’ inability, depending on your point of view, to (a) do one single thing right, or (b) do anything at all. Both are versions of the same thing – an absolute inability to come to grips with anything useful. They only seem to achieve something when earmarks are involved for their own district. The rest of the time they are simply content with engaging in backbiting, character assassination, rampant party politics, and seeing who can achieve the biggest headline of the day by making comments about one another that would be deemed slanderous in any context other than the legislative process.
This statement is not anti-Republican or anti-Democrat; it is anti-Congress, itself, as presently constituted and operated. It wouldn’t matter if we still had Whigs and Tories – the system that we so revere is fatally broken due to the politicization of the legislative process that began in the 1990’s under Newt Gingrich and his gang. While the days when Senator Arthur Vandenberg acted as the loyal opposition in working with President Harry Truman on the Marshall Plan are long gone, one wonders if they shouldn’t be recalled with more than fondness of memory. Truman and Vandenberg couldn’t have been more different politically, and both men were fierce fighters for what they believed. Despite all this, they found ways to work together on important financial legislation necessary to restructure the world economy following the end of World War II. The debate they had was conducted with mutual respect and in relatively calm terms, without all the partisanship and poor English used by today’s Congress.
If you don’t think the current inability of Congress to act rationally is really a problem, take a good look at your forthcoming monthly 401(k) statement. The adverse affect of the Congressional morass upon each of us the past few years has been considerable, but it has been the sort of morass that most of us on what is currently being dubbed “Main Street” have been unable to comprehend. Voting to serve the ends of a President determined to end various of our civil liberties is truly harmful to the general public, but we are able to wrap it up in politics and the American flag and not understand the venality of the President’s and Congress’ actions. However, you won’t having any trouble understanding its adverse effect this month if you have a 401(k) or a bank account at Washington Mutual. The adverse effect will be palpable, and, as I write this, I can only wonder how much of an effect it has had. Opening that envelope will be a real thrill that only a prior drink of scotch will likely mitigate.
The point of all this is that I think we should consider recalling Congress as a whole and starting over from scratch. This is not such a radical idea as it might seem. The current lot of representatives and senators (note the lower case – they don’t deserve the respect of upper case) has become imprinted with a way of doing business that is self destructive and dangerous for the state of the Union. The concept of imprinting was pioneered by Konrad Lorenz when he became convinced that Graylag goslings would attach themselves to the first thing they saw moving after being hatched from their shell. Consequently, he walked around a nest of goslings wearing rubber boots as they hatched, and the geese faithfully followed him (or, rather, his rubber boots) as if he (or the boots) were their parent. This same concept applies when you first take a new job and someone says to you during your first day on that job: “Listen. Around here if you want something done, this is how you go about doing it” and then proceeds to give you the social mores of the organization in question in order to “aid” your integration.
The mores of Congress are sick and debilitating. No business would allow the carping and demonizing that prevail in our respective Congressional delegations. You can argue that this is politics as usual, but I think not. Politics as usual was Arthur Vandenberg and Harry Truman. Politics as usual is not Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. It is time that for the rest of us to say “enough” and toss the rascals out.
The only problem with my plan is that there is no easy mechanism to recall the entire Congress – and I rather suspect that our publicly mean-spirited congressmen aren’t going to go willingly on their own. Further, since the filing deadlines for the November elections have long since passed, we cannot start a third party and go after them that way.
So, my suggestion is for concerned citizens all over the country to make themselves available as write-in candidates for Congress. No, I don’t expect any of the write-in candidates to win in a system that vastly favors entrenched politicians, but if the vote totals for these good folks were to be significant enough for the media to publicly contemplate its import in their usual moronic manner, we might just send a message that enough is enough and it is time to call it quits. In that way we might see some improvement in the next Congress, and sow the seeds for a badly needed third party that can break through the deadlock that currently disables Congress.
Simply put, it is time to throw the bastards out. They had their fun and look what it got the rest of us – envelopes that can only be opened after a stiff, preparatory belt.
