What American Voters Believe

Interesting political season. Lots of talk. Lots of media coverage. Sort of like a circus atmosphere: entertainment, light hearted banter, oohs and aahs but no Pow! No substance. Noise but empty gestures.

Do Americans really like this hoopla? Do we really get anything out of this?

Overheard a conversation the other day. One fellow asked the other what he thought of the presidential candidates so far? Of course he was only referring to the Republican candidates because they are the only ones in the news.

The other fellow said, “they’re all unimpressive and don’t really say anything of

   value. Just posturing.”

 But the other fellow insisted: “which candidate do you think will wind up with

   the nomination?”

And the other fellow said: “not one of them deserves the nomination; but

   Romney will probably get it by default.”

So the other guy says, “well that means Romney will be the next president?”

The other guy said, “no! The Republicans don’t have anyone to actually solve

   national problems; Obama is a shoe in for re-election.”

The other guy said, “really? Wow. I thought for sure Obama was a dead duck.”

Well, go figure! The polls we hear about in the media only poll a narrow group of Republicans who are most likely to vote in the Iowa caucuses, or in primaries in other early voting states. These people don’t really reflect the opinions of the general public.

When asked recently, both Republicans and Democrats supported these issues (53% or more; still close but….):

• Prochoice abortion policies; they are not comfortable with abortions, but feel women have the right to decide; we don’t hear that from the politicians!
• The public supports equality of marriage rights for gay people; no equivocation. Again, we don’t hear that from the politicians
• The public does not want the federal government to shut down operations over the deficit issue in Congress; but the congressmen threaten repeatedly to do just that!
• The public recognizes problems and wants congress to fix them; we hear solutions presented by mostly Democrats, and few if any from Republicans; but the problems remain unsolved and the public allows this to happen

I could go on and on in this vein. We have problems. The people know this. So do politicians. But instead of fixing the problems, politicians keep fighting seemingly over ideologies while nothing gets done. Gridlock. What they’re really fighting for is power: votes and more money to get more votes.

This situation concerns a lot of us. But what do we do about it?

In the slow cycle of elections, we vote people in and out of office hoping to have an effect. Rarely does this occur. So what do we do about this? What can we do that will fix problems before they get any worse?

I think we have the following actions to choose from. Perhaps one, some or all should be implemented by each of us.

1. Protest to elected officials; if enough of us do this it will have an effect!
2. Provide visible protests for public media coverage; lame I know, but the attention sometimes gets authorities to act in the desired way
3. Get people to run for office who will represent our views and desired actions; a very slow process; requires good people to interrupt their lives to do the public’s work; and we make it more difficult for them to do that as time goes on.
4. Recall elected officials who are not doing what we ‘hired’ them to do; also slow, hard work and not always successful; then again, who replaces the ousted?
5. Create an action group to actively organize our public problems in priority order so we know which ones to begin work on; this is easily done; but getting the right people involved is the hardest part! And who takes the lead?
6. Create action groups to work on the priority problem areas and produce workable solutions to choose from; once step 5 is accomplished, step 6 is easier to do
7. Educate the public on the available solutions and pick one for each problem area; this will only happen if media outlets are open to reporting what’s happening and why
8. Lobby appropriate government units to adopt the selected solutions and monitor progress of those implementations; slow but effective if media involvement from step 7 is present
9. Keep the pressure on elected officials and continue to be visible in pressing the public agenda based on our own understanding and priorities; this is more helpful than most people realize

Our governments are not responsive to our needs given the current incumbents. We will need to work around them until we install those we can work with.

Here are some long term objectives we should be working toward and insisting our representatives dedicate themselves to:

• Raising household incomes
• Access to life-long affordable education; help shift to new careers
• Plentiful job creation in healthy industries
• Vibrant personal inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit
• New energy sources to replace oil
• Competitive American auto industry
• Responsive representative governance

Each of these items is interwoven with the others. If we make strong inroads on each of these items I bet we will come close to creating a self-sustaining economy that is both healthy and internationally competitive.

Any one interested in helping get these steps started?

December 17, 2011