If you were going on a trip, and you booked a plane ticket, would you want a pilot who has never flown before? Or one who has at least handled the controls in the cockpit a time or two?
If you were going to the dentist, would you want a dentist who had only read textbooks but never trained on real patients? Or one who knew how to fill a cavity with a minimum of discomfort?
If you were going to buy a birthday cake at a bakery, would you want a baker who had never read a recipe much less bake a cake? Or one who had turned out a cake or two, and had even decorated a few?
The examples could go on and on. . .
So, I wonder why it is that so many people in the United States are positively enamored with people running for political office who have no idea how government works? In fact, the candidates tout their lack of experience. They show up in Washington, D.C., (as they are doing this week), and make statements like--I don't live here...I don't want to spend my time inside the beltway...I just want to do what the people sent me here to do.
I can guess what that might be. Inexperienced legislators make a mess of governing because they don't know how to govern.
I hold no illusions about this new Congress. Sorry for the cynicism and bitterness. But I see very little good coming out of this governance by ignorance movement now afoot.
7 comments:
So wise, Donna. I understand wanting to limit cronie-ism and the "old boys' network" by having term limits but the idea of just voting in "outsiders" to Washington is absurd. To me, that just means the lobbyists will have even more power as they will be the only ones who know what is going on. Sigh.
When the first one said that on a sound bite, I turned to my husband and said, "Let's revisit him in 12 years when he's still there and ask him why he never went home." I am so over the entire process that I simply have tuned out.
I think a lot of people are about to get a dose of reality.
You ask why people vote the way they do -- choosing people precisely because they have no experience. It reflects, i suppose, the radical distrust of authority that we foster in our culture. We keep saying that the authority figures are the problem, and then wonder why no one wants to follow authority.
I have my own strong anti-authority streak: I am a child of the 1960s. But I find it hard to place more trust in those whose greatest ability is to maximize profits, and who have little concern for the good of the whole. Not all Republicans are such; but trusting business rather than government (in a hyper-capitalist state) makes as little sense to me as trusting government instead of business (as in Soviet Russia).
Amen.
I heard a freshman Republican congressman talking about shutting down the government if it didn't go as he pleased. Do they not read ANY history? That didn't go so well they last time it was tried.
I have one word to express how I feel about what you wrote ...
AMEN !
Totally agree. Even on the local level this is obvious. The first year or so of a new council person's term is usually spent figuring out how the town works. Talk about a waste of time. Sometimes these people haven't even been to any town meetings before they decide to run for office! On the national level it can only get worse.
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