The common tribute to our form of government is that it is the
best form of government in the world. You can doubt it, sweat it,
suffer from it, but all Americans swear that nothing was ever
invented that could compare to it. If you are a typical patriotic
American, you will fume with contempt like a religious fanatic at
the suggestion that maybe like a lot of other old clichés
this one is full of holes too. Yet only 43% of Americans ever vote
because most will tell you that whoever is elected will make no
difference to them.
Apparently, almost everything in the world makes a difference to
Americans except who runs their government. If stores stopped
selling their favorite pair of sneakers, it would make a difference
to them. If their favorite football player got traded, or if their
favorite toothbrush were no longer sold, or if their favorite lamp
were replaced, it would cause them 10 times as great a headache as
any change in public office.
People see no contradiction in claiming that our system of
government is the best at the same time as they say, “Who cares who
is elected, they all do nothing anyway.” How great could our system
of government be if whoever serves in it could make absolutely no
difference in your life?
Blame it on the two-party system. It will prevent dictatorship
and guarantee democracy, but it will also guarantee that the
government will get nothing accomplished. Since there is a
presidential election every four years, the opposition party has to
start campaigning twenty minutes after the last election.
Obviously, the only way to get back in power is to prove that the
newly elected President is a failure who can accomplish nothing. It
therefore becomes a full-time job to spend the next four years on a
search and destroy mission.
The opposition becomes like a mob of detectives trying to find
out what the President might do and then to kill any chance he has
of doing it. If he is lucky enough to get anything started, it
becomes their business to prove that it is either worthless or
hopeless. If it cures a cold, they will claim it causes pneumonia,
if it cures pneumonia they’ll say it endangers your life by raising
your cholesterol, if it lowers your cholesterol they’ll argue it
raises your blood pressure. They will try by any means to defame,
decry, and destroy any attempts by the President to achieve
anything that would be applauded by the people.
That is why the whole concept of the two-party system is a
hopeless case because the opposition party is in a position of a
total conflict of interest. No judge in a court of law would be
allowed to hear a case if he were in any way in a position to
profit from the result, whether the profit would be in money,
popularity or even for a better table at a delicatessen. He would
excuse himself from the premises and even avoid the neighborhood so
he could never be accused of any connection to the proceedings. If
this is true with a judge, why isn’t it with a congressman? What
could create a greater conflict of interest to him than the
possibility of losing the future of his life in government?
It is no accident that the only pledge more often broken than
the vow not to commit adultery is the pledge by the politicians
with reference to “term limits.” If you heard a list of their
excuses and explanations about why they swore to a two-term limit
and suddenly decided to violate their pledge, change their minds,
and run again, you would realize that they have as much honor as a
pig in heat.
Could you expect anybody with that level of morality to be more
concerned about what could help the people than about what can help
him get elected?
It is no accident that the two-party system has stifled and
destroyed almost any attempt at passing any legislation. Isn’t it
amazing that America, the richest country in the world, is one of
the only countries in the world that still does not have national
health insurance? Why is it that we have billions of dollars for
planes, bombs and wars, but if an elderly man needs a prescription
drug to save his life, somehow the richest country in the world is
still locked in a debate between the two parties about whether it
will unbalance the budget in order to pay for it? Why is it that we
have billions of dollars to rebuild complete countries after every
war, but a bigger percentage of American cities are full of more
slums than any city in all of Europe? Why is it that we can afford
everything in the world, but the cost of decent housing will
somehow screw up the budget even more than the cost of prescription
drugs? Obviously, the threat of passing any such legislation is not
a threat to the budget; it is a threat only to the opposition
party. That is why America has failed to address these issues for
the last thirty years, because every failure becomes the best
weapon for the opposition party in its campaigning for the next
election.
Would a corporation ever show a profit if it functioned on the
basis of a two-party system? If the CEO of a company had the
support of the majority of stockholders and there was a Tom Daschle
undermining, dismembering, and destroying everything he did, that
Daschle would be considered worse than a traitor, and they would
have to call out the National Guard to protect him. Yet every time
Bush proposes anything, you can depend on Tom Daschle to be on
television within ten minutes to tell you why it is unworkable,
inconceivable and will destroy America either tonight or not later
than a week from Thursday. Watching him on television talking about
Bush sounds more frightening than President Bush talking about the
Al Qaeda. Daschle refers to Bush as though he were an escaped
terrorist who is loose among us and we must find a way to put an
end to him before it is all over for the survival of our
country.
No matter what Bush proposes Daschle immediately announces that
it is only another program to favor the rich. Even if it was a cure
for the measles, he would find a way to imagine that since the rich
have more measles than anybody else Bush is replacing all the funds
that the middle class could have used to buy more socks. Daschle
always sounds tough and outraged until reporters start asking
questions and suddenly he looks as befuddled as a child who lost
his parents in Disneyland. You cannot blame him. He is only doing
his job as the head of the opposition party.
If you want to know why the two-party system is a hopeless case
watch Tom Daschle on television. While he poses as the most
compassionate fighter for the ordinary people, he spends all his
time preventing the passage of any bill that could help them. But
he is only doing his job. After all, he is the minority leader of
the United States Senate. He is also the chief hypocrite of the
United States of America.
