Leading the Republicans are two U.S. senators, a former
senator, a former governor, and a former big city mayor who, Sen. Joe
Biden once said, constructs every sentence with three words—a noun, a
verb, and 9/11.
It’s understandable that the Democrats want change. After all, for the
past seven years, Americans have been subjugated to the arrogant abuse
of power, innumerable constitutional violations, myriad no-bid
multi-million dollar federal contracts that benefit corporations with
White House connections, an undeclared and unprovoked war in Iraq, a
failure to protect the environment or American cities, and an economy
that is in nuclear decay. What the Democrats don’t say is that for most
of the seven years, by their failure to organize and speak out about
the problems, even if it may have cost them votes in re-election
campaigns, they solidified their position as part of the establishment.
But, the Republicans are also calling for change, as if they weren’t
part of the problem to begin with. They quietly say they support
President Bush, but never mention his name in public, and secretly hope
the tainted President and Vice-President puppet-master won’t bless them
with an endorsement.
Somewhere in the mix is a congressman from Texas, whose third party
candidacy is marred by his honesty that change is necessary to return
the nation to the eighteenth century.
The American people themselves may say they are tired of the same old
politics, and they want change—thus precipitating the pollsters to tell
the candidates that “change” will work in the campaigns. But the voters
continually re-elect incumbents.
The problem with pushing for “change” is not that change is good or
bad, but that the political process is soiled by a reality that
transcends all others. Those out of office want to be in office, so
they drag out populist appeals to try to convince voters that things
will be different once there’s a new person in the—fill in the
blank—city council, state legislature, congress, presidency. For the
entire campaign, promises will flow until the flood eventually drowns
the people. Once elected, the politicians’ mission is to stay elected.
They can’t understand why their new opponents, the ones who want their
jobs, are so mean as to attack them. After all, the officials, so they
believe, only have the people’s best interests at heart—even if it
appears to violate the constitution or benefit friends of the officials.
“Change” may be the new buzzword of this campaign, but “establishment” is what perpetuates the system.
[Walter Brasch is professor of mass communications/journalism at
Bloomsburg University. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State:
The Presidency of George W. Bush, available at amazon.com and other
bookstores. You may contact Brasch through his website,
www.walterbrasch.com]
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