We Can Do Better

                                              NOTES OF CONCERN....
                                                              ... JACK BLAIR 


                                                “  We Can Do Better “

The older I get, the more I am convinced that most people fall into one of two broad general descriptive categories.

The first category I call people with good hearts.

The second category is for people who are just mean spirited.

With the recent dust-up in Washington, DC we had lots of opportunities to see both good-hearted people and mean-spirited people.

We saw them on television.

We read them in our newspapers.

We heard about them in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol.

There were elected representatives who have a deep concern for the needy and downtrodden and clearly saw that affordable healthcare was an incredibly important service to offer the people of the nation.

There were elected representatives who have a deep concern for the needy and downtrodden and clearly felt that enacting another law that would result in spending trillions and create yet another group of entitlements was not in anyone’s best interest.

I can accept that the representatives described in the two preceding paragraphs could easily be included in the category of people with good hearts.

How can that be you might well ask.

The answer is quite simple. The representatives I describe have deep convictions and they vote those convictions. They each want what is best for the people they represent although they differ on the best way to provide what is best for the people.

These folks are the true inheritors of the best of elected representatives throughout our history. They understand where the other views have been generated. They value their colleagues who think differently. They do not question the motives of their colleagues with whom they differ.

At the end of the day they will vote, the votes will be tabulated, and they will move on to the next important issue awaiting their deliberations, and they will do so without rancor.  They know that on each future issue there will be a multitude of differing opinions, and that they may well find themselves on the same side with a colleague who was on the opposite side of the most recent legislative battle.

Now let's move to the mean-spirited group.

Into this group we can easily slip every representative who berates his fellows, damns their views, questions their motives, and generally finds it necessary to demonize them in order to win the day.

This is a relatively unsavory group of politicians. They represent the worst of our people. They have no class and even less talent. The Republic is not well served by them.

Sadly, more and more of them are getting elected.

Sadly, more and more of the people with good hearts are choosing to retire or simply have no interest in re-election. What was once a classy deliberative body is rapidly becoming a farce.

Americans bear a serious responsibility to correct this trend.

Correction can only be delivered at the ballot box.

When you meet a candidate for office who is eager to tell you why his or her opponent is dangerous,  untrustworthy, or out-of-touch and that the only thing standing between the horrors that would come with the election of their opponent is......him, you are in the presence of a mean-spirited man.

Run to the polls.

Vote for people with good hearts.

They are the people who know how to work together to solve problems.

Let me remind you that arguably the most liberal Supreme Court Justice is Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the most conservative Associate Justice is Antonin Scalia. They rarely agree on anything before the court. Yet outside the court they are the best of friends, socialize together, and have great admiration for one another.

President Eisenhower had very little in common with the Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn or the Majority Leader of the Senate Lyndon Johnson, but he understood, as did they, that working together quietly behind the scenes and reaching the best agreement they could was the way to do the nation’s business. They worked together to deliver the Era of Peace and Prosperity.

Each of my readers with some reflection could construct his or her own list of leaders throughout history who were people with good hearts.

I use only these few examples of what are many  of people with good hearts who know how to get the peoples’ work done. And in all the instances I have studied in history, these people simply did not permit personality to enter into the mix, learned to identify and admire the positive traits of their opponents in the public arena, and found ways to disagree without being disagreeable.

We pay our elected representatives a lot of money and load them down with a serious list of “perks.”  While they might whine about how much more they could earn in industry, you may have noticed few of them are applying for jobs in industry. They know exactly how good they have it.

Now what we have to convince them of is that getting us more “stuff” is not the way to earn our vote. Convince them that what we want is serious consideration of the issues, teamwork in the interest of the nation, and that we understand that sometimes sacrifice is needed, not just in the halls of Congress but in our own living rooms.

And let them know that we are ready to join them in making whatever sacrifices are necessary to ensure the future of our country.

This unseemly need to demonize, castigate, and tear down opponents is neither appropriate nor helpful. It is the work of amateurs, poseurs, and mean-spirited people.

Let’s not reward mean-spirited people by electing, or reelecting, them to public office. Let us retire them all.

Let's identify and honor people with good hearts.

Our country will be so much better off if we are able to accomplish this.