Opinion - We need more Boehners

We need more Boehners

That’s My Opinion

By Bob Robinson

Oct. 15, 2010

I’m getting tired of politics. How about you?

Typically, it happens every four years, those divisible by four; ie, 2004, 2008, 2012 and so on.

However, people now realize that 2008 was a disaster, so the current off-year election process is just as nasty as two years ago, as they try to repair the damage. Welcome to 2010.

I watch Channel 7 news every morning. I could be wrong, but it seems like there’s less news and more commercials than before. I could be wrong, but it seems like two out of every three commercials has some candidate bashing his or her opponent.

Does it seem like it’s been going on forever? Probably because it has.

I’ve often spoken of the unintended consequences of what those we anoint as our leaders do “on our behalf.”

Take the expanded voting window, for instance. Instead of having a single election day where all good citizens climb off their couches or take a little extra time for lunch and go to the polls, we now have “early voting.”

In most states, people can go to selected poll sites as much as 30 days in advance of the actual election and cast their votes. Even the laziest among us can find a few minutes to swing by a polling place after watching a few sound bites in the middle of their favorite soaps or sitcoms.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they will be more informed. It only means we have to suffer through attack ads for much longer than in the past.

It also means that we will likely know little or nothing about local candidates who are typically just getting their campaigns off the ground by the time many voters have already tapped on their federally mandated touch screens. And by then, most voters just want it over anyway.

They’d vote for Mickey Mouse if he could promise going back to the days when we only had to put up with the mud slinging for a month or two.

According to the news, as many as a third of registered voters have already voted in some areas.

I can’t wait for Nov. 2.

Frankly, I don’t even know why we have campaigns. We all know that what the majority of voters seem interested in is what the candidates can give them.

A chicken in every pot? A car in every garage? Forty acres and a mule? Share the wealth? How do you think our current administration and Congress got into power?

It’s called “bringing home the pork.” What have you done for me lately?

Our own U.S. House Representative, John Boehner, has been a kind of rogue in that area. He never brings the pork home. And has been criticized extensively for it.

This year’s campaign has been about stopping big government in its tracks. Stop the spending! Make government smaller! Get government out of our lives! Lower our taxes! Stop killing the economy! Something Boehner’s been trying to do since he’s been in office.

But do we really want that?

Stop and think about it… what are we willing to give up? Most of us receive something from Big Brother. It might be tax breaks, or Social Security, or Medicare prescription benefits, food stamps, federal funding, our own special “bridge to nowhere,” federal funding for our schools… the list goes on and on and on!

Social Security and Medicare are doomed to failure. Neither was designed for the longevity medical science has given us. Taking responsibility for our own retirement and healthcare is an approach no one even thinks about any more… believe it or not, big government irresponsibility was more the cause of the current meltdown than anything that can be pinned on the “greedy” free enterprise system.

With all the tax dollars we put into education and wealth redistribution, for instance, poverty is still rampant and our kids still can’t read or write. We did a better job of educating our kids and helping the poor before the feds got involved.

Been watching the news lately? We are on the fast track to the same national bankruptcy that France, Greece and other socialist countries are facing.

The rhetoric is there. Cut the spending. Make government smaller. We just have to be damn sure that’s what we want.

Remember John Boehner? We are asking for more of him. The more of him we have in Washington the less we’ll have to compromise to reach our goals.

I promise you, it will hurt. I promise you that each of us will lose something. Some more than others. If the politicians deliver as promised, we will be screaming bloody murder at what we asked for, just as we are now screaming bloody murder at what we asked for two years ago.

But if our kids are to have a future, we need him and more like him. We need more Boehners.

That’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Bob Robinson is the retired editor of The Daily Advocate, Greenville, Ohio. If you wish to receive a daily notification of his comments, opinions and reports, send your email address to: opinionsbybob@gmail.com. Feel free to express your views.