We have leadership problems all over the place in this country. Why?

In today’s Sphere blog we have a solid article entitled Opinion: Enough Change to Believe In? which more or less takes on the Obama Administration for being likable but mostly ineffective relative to getting progressive causes passed into workable legislation for the good of the people.

These articles that I post here today for your slow and steady perusal show the clear demarcation line that now exists for all Americans between electing politicians we are comfortable having in leadership positions and those that we actually need to have in leadership positions in order to achieve progressive populist goals.

Our leadership is largely ineffective because we cannot decide what we want in our leaders.  The problem is not the leaders so much as it is us, the followers. No one in the 250,000 year history of Homo Sapiens Sapiens has ever made an omelette without breaking eggs.  It is impossible.

But that is what we all want, we want omelettes for breakfast but we insist that eggs not be broken.  We want something for nothing.  Leadership and followship do not work that way.

The problem is not with the leaders, the problem is with us the followers.

In this article from the Washington Post today entitled Democrats ponder health-care reform plans in wake of Massachusetts Senate race we learn that the election last night of the GOP candidate to the Senate in Massachusetts probably means the death of the Health Care Bill.  I am a Democrat and I say “good!”.  The bill was lousy.

Too many corners were cut in that Bill to make it of any use to the disenfranchised, the impoverished, the under employed or unemployed or anyone else with marginal health care status in the USA.  That is probably roughly 40 to 60 percent of the population.

When the top producing democracy in the world cannot provide adequate health care to all of its citizenry, then what we have is oligarchical rule by the rich shareholders who do not want to pay for the health care of the working  stakeholders in society.

That is when the social contract between the “haves” and the “have nots” breaks down and that is when revolution is a real danger.

This is basic Labor-Management 101.  If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

And when the monkeys get sick and cannot afford healthcare, they die like the animals that they are expected to be.  At some point, monkeys get nasty and start to bite and harrass the population.  Ask anyone who has ever been in India and seen a troop of monkeys on the rampage.  We are close to that now in this country.

If you treat people like monkeys long enough, they will start to take a monkey’s vengance on the keepers.  I throw that on the table for my Republican friends to consider.

At some point the desperate take desperate measures to equal things out.

The health care bill needs to be rewritten.  The Democrats have lost nothing in the Brown election last night relative to health care legislation . That bill was so watered down that it provided essentially nothing that the poor and underemployed and the disenfranchised needed.  It was all show and little substance.  Good riddance to it.  Just let it die.

Lets start over. 

And I am talking about every issue before the Obama Administration.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post today entitled It’s too soon to grade Obama’s performance as president we learn that a seasoned Washington correspondent, Ruth Marcus, just does not know where to place Obama on the political spectrum.  Guess what Ruth?  Neither do we.

The piece shows just how confusing Obama has been to the professionals who have spent their lives commenting on politics.  That ain’t good!  A Democrat who acts like a moderate Republican on most issues is …… a moderate Republican.  It is really pretty much that simple.

And finally from today’s New York Times we find an article entitled Obama to Create Panel to Study Deficit in which once again, the Obama Administration is attempting to use a bi-partisan approach to a problem which Congress has not been able to solve in decades, perhaps even generations. 

Can’t we just cut the defense budget?  Is it really that hard? 

Other nations have armies and navies, let them carry the lion’s share of the load for “world protection” or “Western domination” or ” global economic security” or whatever the hell it is we are trying to do with a $700 billion dollar defense budget.  Is that so difficult to ask our allies?

A bi-partisan commission set up by Obama to study deficit reduction will give us….a report.  It is not action.  It is not what we need.  We need less guns and more butter.  It is pretty much that simple. We need…..

Leadership. 

We don’t have it.  But then, we do not have responsible followship either.  We cannot have either until we can agree on priorities.  We have not been able to do that since…when?  You choose the date. But it was generations ago. I am guessing this goes back as least as far as FDR.

If this political deadlock over differing views of American culture continues, we will very quickly slip into irrelevancy on the world stage.  One can see the signs already.  We are too busy fighting the culture wars with each other while China and India and Russia are preparing to eat our lunch economically.

We are our own worst enemies.  That much is clear now.  What is not so clear is whether or not we even care.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)