It says "Puppet for President 2012" and I don't know whether this was referring to Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or whoever.
But it did make a statement about the perceived ability of government to lead and perhaps that someone is "pulling the strings."
Governance is the act of administering, managing and of course implies leadership and decision-making.
Yet what is driving the American people crazy is that our government seems for all intensive purposes broken, almost paralyzed.
Current readings are of political stalemate, problems that are too big and complex and the compromises too painful after years of excess, where indecision reigns supreme, and with that the popularity of government is at all time lows--10% for Congress and 36% for the President.
Here's a basic example written about today in the Wall Street Journal: despite a drop in first class mail over the last decade (thanks to email and texting) from 100 billion to fewer than 70 billion pieces of first class mail and cumulative losses from 2006 to March 2013 of $41 billion, we still can't decide whether to cut Saturday mail delivery that could save over $3 billion a year alone.
Other examples of government indecision are almost too numerous to name:
- Should we intervene in Syria's civil war that has taken more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions?
- When should we take action against Iranian nuclear facilities that violate nuclear non-proliferation and threaten world peace?
- How should we handle militant Islamic and Al Qaeda threats that don't seem to dissipate?
- What do we do about the mounting federal deficit with a national debt approaching $17 trillion that is still rising about $2 billion a day!
- With fiscal cliffs, debt ceiling, sequestrations, and cuts to the U.S. credit rating, can we find our way forward?
- What should we do to get people back to work with an employment level of 58.6%, still around the lowest in the last 30 years?
- How do we reign in entitlement spending that needy people depend on, but where nearly half (49%) of Americans households today receive transfer payments, and entitlement spending has risen to $2.3 trillion annually and now are over 60% of entire federal outlays.
- How do we improve morale of the U.S. middle-class when only 33% think their children will be better off than their parents?
- What should we do about so many hanging issues out there--immigration reform, spiraling health care costs, improving our education system, balancing surveillance and privacy, and much more?
However, the ultimate question really is whether no decision is better than a decision?
With no decision, the problems continue to escalate until they sort of magically go away on their own (i.e. they are "overcome by events") or more ominously, they reach epic crisis proportions.
With a decision to act, we may make good decisions that positively impact the situation or we may make bad decisions that have a negative impact, but even with a bad decision, we can monitor the effects and course-correct until we show true improvement.
Decisions often mean winners and losers--and no one wants to lose anything--and there are lobbyists and special interest groups--and no one wants to be voted out of office...so what do we do?
Oh no, I can't decide!
The reality is that we will will have to make hard decisions or they will be made for us--we will either be the masters of our own fate of the slaves of our indecision.
We can take back control and fix what is broken or wallow in despair and disrepair.
We can act now or kick the can down the road and have much more painful decisions later.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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