It is hard to be certain though as I am not sure exactly what qualifies one as "Kyoto buster".
No, I didn't mean you in any way. You and I are little people. Little people can't be megalomaniacs in world affairs. Only decision makers qualify. I wasn't talking about those in the core constituency being addressed, rather the politicians making the decisions.<g>
Tim, this is just one of my hobby horses. It has nothing to do with supporting or signing the Kyoto treaty. Or about Mexican trucks. I really have a pet peeve about excessive partisanship in government. I think these two issues are examples of a particularly egregious lack of statesmanship, one for each party, fair and balanced, as they say on Fox.
What I see in these two examples is office-holders, representatives of the people, whose decision making was seemingly corrupted by too strong a need to make a big splash with core partisan constituencies, in these cases, the anti-environmentalists and the unions. I agree with Steven that the Mexican truck example was the worse of the two, but there's plenty to dislike in both of them and I find the pattern distasteful.
Let's look at the truck example since Kyoto is a hot button for you. Here we have a treaty, NAFTA, that has been in place for ten years and was supported by both parties and is generally considered, at least after the fact, to be a no-brainer-class good deal overall, although individuals have suffered. Ten years into it and we haven't yet implemented the part about trucks crossing the border with Mexico, only with Canada.
So here we have the Democrats sucking up to the Teamsters in order to get an attaboy from this core constituency at the expense of a treaty, improved trade, more jobs on both sides of the border, and improved relations with Mexico, which could help us with heaven knows how many other problems like immigration, all to get the party a group hug from a union. And, to top it off, they risk alienating another consistency, the Hispanics, who everyone agrees are a key element of the next elections.
So, I call that short sighted because the costs down the road for this grandstand play may be huge. I call it megalomaniacal because they seem to think they can get away with it. And partisan, because that's the rationale, not statesmanship. Now if that isn't bone-headed...
Karen |
