As you can tell, I don't seriously disagree with your sentiments, Mary, about Hillary.
But I was reminded yesterday, reading about the latest press releases of the 9-11 commission, just how corrupted our political culture has become. Particularly as relates to rhetoric.
The 9-11 commission was talking about a real issue--just how much more secure the US is after 9-11. Not at all, they say. Perhaps less so. Yet our political culture is concerned with just how electable an issue that is and how to spin it one way or another. The newspapers treat it as something that can help or hurt Bush, help or hurt the Dems, etc.
If one simply listed the issues that desperately need substantive attention and then ran on them, that would be genuinely earthshaking.
1. Homeland security is in tatters. How to fix it.
2. Far too many folk don't have health insurance and those numbers are growing. There is a serious argument that many US corporations such as GM and Ford cannot compete with Japanese car companies because of health insurance costs. Perhaps we should revisit the issue of health insurance based on the workplace and make it a single payer, taxpayer funded item instead. That's a serious debate.
3. Elizabeth Kolbert has one of her increasingly alarming bits on the consequences, growing rapidly, of global warming, in this week's New Yorker. That needs a national debate and measures to address it.
4. Our urban schools are in serious disrepair along with much of the urban infrastructure--bridges, roadways, etc. How can that be fixed?
5. The war on terror needs to be pursued but with new strategies to focus on terrorist groups and reconnect ourselves to the efforts of other nations.
I could make that list endless. But all these, in my mind, are very serious, demand debate, etc. and are campaign issues. Will the 06 and 08 campaigns address? I doubt it. |
