Political Frenzy

“Why doesn’t Congress do anything?”
“Tradition mostly” – Congressman Charlie Wilson

When I say the word ‘politician’ what do you think of? Most people would respond with ‘sleazy,’ ‘scandalous,’ or some other word that would require me to hide the children.

Much has been talked about as to how to keep our politicians from become corrupt, and to get the corrupt ones out. The problem is that the ones who need to be governed by laws are the ones who make the laws. It’s a catch-22.

One idea that gets tossed around (to make it look like they are trying to fix the problem) is term limits. In the California State Legislature members are allowed to serve a total of 14 years between the two houses. 8 years as a State Senator and 6 as a member of the Assembly. Recently the leadership (who all just so happened to stand to be termed out at the end of their current terms) introduced Proposition 93.

Like most of politics there has been nothing but confusion surrounding Prop 93, which California voters defeated on Super Tuesday. This 53% opposed proposition was marketed using a successful tactic of confusion. Voters were unsure if it eliminated term limits, shortened term limits, increased speed limits, or who even supported it.

All that Prop 93 would have done was shortened the total amount of years to 12 years of service, but it would allow a person to serve all twelve years in the same house.

Prop 93’s support was also confusing. At one point the Governor didn’t support it, but then suddenly endorsed it. Some say he realized that 3 or the 4 leaders in the State Legislature would become ‘lame ducks’ if the proposition didn’t pass and would make it impossible for the Governor to advance his agenda.

Prop 93 was a good idea, but term limits are only a mere band-aid on the malignant issue. The issue should not be how long politicians should serve; it should be about us finally holding them accountable to their service. Let’s say that Speaker Nunez was using special interest money to go on Luis Vuitton shopping sprees in Paris as the anti-Prop 93 commercials touted, then why do his term limits matter? If he is using money other than his own to live his ‘opulent lifestyle’ he shouldn’t be re-elected even if he was eligible.

Every voter is afraid of politicians who are in bed with special interest groups, the ones who don’t pay attention to us anymore. We all see that some of our U.S. Congressmen and women are corrupt; we see Jack Abramoff in FBI custody, our Representatives homes being raided, and Senators asking for “favors” in airport bathrooms.

Congress’ overall approval rating is historically below 30% every year, and was as low as 11% in 2007. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll last September asked, “Overall, how much do you think Congress has accomplished this year: a great deal, a good amount, not too much, or nothing at all?” 2% answered “A great deal,” 14%, “A good amount,” and 65% said “Not too much.”

We don’t trust out members of Congress, but we consistently re-elect them at rates over 95%.

The fact that these people spend millions of dollars running for a job that pays around $160,000 a year should be cause to throw a penalty flag. They do it because they get away with anything, they always have. If you give a mouse a cookie…

Look at Congressman John Doolittle, he has been under investigation by the FBI for years now, and he has been re-elected 8 times! While his colleagues were being thrown in jail he was out being re-elected. Are we nuts!? People he works with are being thrown in jail and we just say ‘ok, but you aren’t doing that stuff right? Ok we’ll re-elect you.’ Doolittle finally had to announce that he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2008. (District 4 rejoice, you don’t have to re-elect him again!). I suppose the FBI raids on his homes made him wonder if he stood a chance in November, nah he would have been re-elected.

Unfortunately voters have become mindless lemmings when it comes to elections. Just because someone was elected does not mean that they have to be re-elected! If we paid attention to what our politicians were doing and held them accountable for their actions term limits would be unnecessary. The fact that we have term limits in California shows that we don’t trust ourselves to hold our elected officials accountable.

With the way we don’t pay attention to what our politicians do they would get away with murder, and no I won’t make a Ted Kennedy reference here.