Restraint Too Is A Virtue
The suspense is over. The long, drawn-out and ultimately by turns frustrating and boring election campaign is concluded. Voters' hopes were on tenterhooks. An enormous amount of money was spent on this election - about $9-billion U.S. A breathtaking amount of money to pay for all manner of advertisements, some of them bordering on the scurillous and many of them representing personal attacks on the candidates, twisting the truth when the occasion demanded, and evading real issues of concern to the electorate.The presiding presidential candidate seemed to feel that his party would be a shoe-in, until he had a wake-up call after slumbering peacefully through the first televised debate that vaulted the presidential contender into the raised estimation of many voters who had felt initially disposed to write him off as a viable candidate. But Mitt Romney was an exceedingly good candidate. And he is, personally, a very nice man, just as Barack Obama is a very nice man.
And after Mitt Romney wiped up the studio floor with a flabbergasted Barack Obama, the game of influencing the uncommitted became a little more serious and dedicated to the most critical issues at hand; mostly the economy and the stubborn rate of unemployment and the seemingly stalled advance of good times. Bad times is what the U.S. is now mired in, with its four straight years of $1-trillion deficits.
And its declining international reputation as the world's number one economy and influence powerhouse. Alongside the contentious and seriously extreme situations of insecurity it faces respecting its adversarial positions with China which owns most of its debt, and Russia, which counteracts all of its recommendations at the UN Security Council, from Syria to Iran.
Barack Obama promised many things, and he half-delivered on some of them. Relations between the Republicans and the Democrats have never been more fractured; the two parties, and the House of Representatives and the Senate, each of which is controlled by each of them, are continually locked in a combat zone of ideological dissonance.
Difficult to agree on anything, much less to pass meaningful legislation. On the social welfare file, on the universal health file, the country has moved to the model seen in Europe, which can barely afford what they have in place. Large-scale tax reform is on the horizon; viewed rather differently from each perspective, but now the Republican perspective has been shunted aside and the Democrats' will become reality.
The Republicans for the foreseeable future will be a long time persuading Americans that they deserve another kick at the can. Although Mitt Romney is a decent man, the other aspiring candidates to contend for the presidency were all dreadfully flawed; he was the only credible offering. The Tea Party types with their grip on passion over reason, and right-wing rhetoric frightened too many voters who had no wish to invite them to power.
Barack Obama is now given a second opportunity to demonstrate his mettle. His alliances with unsavoury religious fanatics other than the American evangelical right is leading to an infiltration of those whose agenda bodes no good for the United States. His righteously social-welfare indignation over wealth in America is earning him a backlash from business leaders and Republicans who can be worked alongside for the greater good of the country.
His will be the choice now to take a prudent course for his party, and his government; to compromise and engage the opposition, or to remain mired in stubborn defiance and ultimate lock-down.
Labels: Democracy, Human Fallibility, Political Realities, United States, Values
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 08, 2012
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