Government Shutdown: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

What are we to say when our children learn from our leaders in congress that it is okay for you to take your ball in the middle of a game and go home? How are we as adults going to explain to these young adults that congress is having a temper tantrum and that they are going to make the American people pay for their childishness?

It is one thing to argue and disagree about philosophy, but it is entirely different when you refuse to do any work because your view is the only view that is right or correct or whatever it is that the Tea Party Republicans see as their position.

Democracy is founded in the idea of compromise. It is inherent in the institution. Without compromise, there is no democracy.  This is evident in any country that tries to replicate democracy and does not understand or is unwilling to give into it underpinnings.

Russia is a perfect example. They have democracy in name only. Putin has made sure of that. He is an autocrat that has found a way to game the system so that democracy cannot live and breathe. He has bullied and changed the constitution so that he can become the next dictator of Russia, while pretending to be the democratically elected president.

In the Middle East, murder in Iraq is desired long before compromise.  For democracy to work, there has to be a certain level of mutual trust amongst the rival parties. There has to be a certain level of mutual respect amongst the rival parties. When that is absent, then, all sorts of ill-conceived ideas will take root causing chaos and mayhem. Democracy cannot and will not work in countries that do live and believe in these foundations no matter how much America tries to force the issue.

This is what is happening in Washington DC. As I sit here three thousand miles away in Seattle, I see the three ring circus known as the federal government ready to cut off it nose despite its face. I see sad, angry men unwilling to see beyond their tiny corners of the country.  I see men so saturated in their own narcissism that they refuse or are unable to have a vision for America.

Even, during the darkest days or Vietnam or Watergate, there were politicians that had a vision for America. I may not have agreed with their vision, but they had one. This idea does not exist in today’s world. With politicians more worried about their reelection or preparing a bid for the White House those ideals about the country are dead on arrival.

Today, it is not about what I have done; it is about what I can stop.  It is about listen to me because I am me. Vanity and public attention seems to be the endgame. There is no thought to the idea that the American people need politicians to tackle big ideas and bring about big change so that the country can grow and prosper.

I see no Lyndon Johnsons on the horizons. To me he was one of the greatest presidents we have elected. He was a flawed man, a vain man, yet one who looked at the future of America and saw something few others did. He was a man that changed the course of history with the Great Society. He blew it with Vietnam, but who at the time would have done it differently? I don’t know.

The one thing he had was compassion for the American people, and a belief that he could set America on a new course. I don’t see that ideology from any of our current politicians. At the end of Johnson’s first term, he stood tall as a statesman, and acknowledged his politically fatal mistake we know as Vietnam. 

Where are those men or women today? I don’t see them. This makes me sad for America.  We have no one to draw strength from. President Johnson refused to run for a second term.  He made the ultimate sacrifice for the nation: his ambition took a back seat for the country. This cannot happen in 2013, and we as a nation and a people are suffering, and will continue to suffer until this changes.