Campaign Cringe

I will freely admit that Presidential campaigns cause me to cringe. Each election cycle viscerally reminds me how broken our system is. Unfortunately I majored in Political Science in college. There I learned how our political system was set up and it was a great system. Many folks don’t know any better and believe the system we now have is the system our founding fathers intended. It is not even close.

For example: Separation of Powers. The legislature was designed to keep the President from becoming an elected King. The Supreme Court was supposed to hold the Legislature’s decisions in line with the Constitution. Instead of appointing Supreme Court justices because of their constitutional knowledge, they are appointed because of their political leanings… leanings that should, in no way, influence their decisions. Instead of working together to keep the republic running properly, each branch has become separate, renegade and power seeking entities. To hell with the Constitution, to hell with the health of America, nobody gives a crap about Joe average citizen. It is all about getting one’s way, pleasing one’s voter base, getting reelected and gaining and exercising power.

For decades our Presidents have been running over the top of the Legislature and acting as elected kings. The defense for this unconstitutional activity, as ridiculous as it is, has been, “The President of the other party did it while he was in office.” The fact that others have done it doesn’t make it right for such behavior to continue. And Congress has consistently lacked the gumption to do anything about it. Remember that members of Congress are only interested in one thing – being reelected. The solution to this particular problem is term limits. Term limits would bring to an end to the power and influence of lobbyists, special interest groups and big business giving huge amounts of money to reelection campaigns and thus controlling the votes of our legislators. Term limits would free legislators to do what they were elected to do – vote the will of the people, instead of concentrating on being reelected. I have had people tell me that if term limits were implemented our present system would no longer word. I am concerned when I must point out the obvious to these people. Our present system is already not working.

During the past century a shift took place that has changed everything and made the election process a chaotic, “I can give you more” slugfest. Originally the government was designed and empowered to do certain and limited things. In the 1900’s the politicians added something to that list. I am not privy as to why. I wasn’t there. It could have been for the best of intentions or it may be an effort to control the electorate. Whatever the reason, it became the government’s job to take care of everyone. As far as I can tell it started with Roosevelt’s response to the great depression. His response was Social Security, welfare and government jobs. Many people think these were the greatest things to happen in the history of our nation. I don’t. Especially since his programs didn’t work. Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t solve the Great Depression; our participation in World War II did.

 The government has proven itself inept at caring for those in need. It is not even close. Over the years our government has consistently funneled huge amounts of money into government programs to solve poverty and social problems and have made almost no discernable progress. Decades of antipoverty programs and billions of dollars have been invested and still we have almost nothing to show for the effort. I would call that inept.

While on this train of thought, I honestly can’t understand why such a large majority of African-Americans vote consistently for Democrats. In general, under Democratic regimes, the economic plight of African-Americans has consistently grown worse. Is there some kind of magical thinking involved here? I would suggest that looking at the results of your vote… what your candidates did or didn’t do… should inform your future votes. Is our voting just a knee jerk reaction; a habit; a case of not paying attention; thoughtlessly believing the same empty rhetoric campaign after campaign? Good old practical Jesus put it like this: “You shall know them by their fruits.” What do they produce? Ignore the rhetoric and look at the results. If we, Republicans and Democrats alike, were to judge by the fruits of our politicians, we would vote them all out of office. Are we too ignorant or too frightened to vote such a change? We, as a nation, have been set up to fail by our thoughtless, uninformed voting patterns. My dad told me that my grandfather McConnell was a “Yellow dog Democrat.” When I asked him what that meant he said, “My dad would vote for a yellow dog if he was on the Democratic ticket.” Unfortunately there are “Yellow dog Republicans”, too. Such an approach to the political system is not only dumb, it is dangerous. We can and must do better.

It is unclear who first said this, but not knowing the source doesn’t lessen the truth it holds: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to a loose fiscal policy… ”

I don’t know what that the collapse will lead to but it won’t be good. When writing the part about voting ourselves money from the government treasury the author is right on target. We have been doing it for years. Just listen to the politicians as they work at outdoing each other in promising to give us more in return for our votes… election after election. And this election the candidates have taken this approach to new heights.

Are our present political and economic systems screwed up? Obviously. Does our present governmental system have a snowball’s chance in hell of fixing it? Absolutely not. First we have to fix our system. Business as usual will not work. One more time – TERM LIMITS. That won’t completely solve the problem, but it would be a great start.

Copyright © 2016, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is Senior Minister at Norwood Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press.

He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon