I appreciate that you take the time to respond to my whining, Ed.


Ed Huntress wrote:

You may find this strange, but I've never, ever thought of electing a
president in terms of what they're going to do in my best interest. It's
always been the country's best interest, and I assume we'll all be better
off when that's what they do.

Ok, so looking back, was that a valid assumption?

IS the country better off?

Is it good for the country to have such a great difference between the
rich and the poor?

And what about the shrinking "middle class".
It's not shrinking because more of them are getting rich.

We had a great run for a while, but are we really better off?


Maybe that's why I find both of our current candidates acceptable. I believe
they're both pursuing the country's best interest as they see it. McCain
doesn't bother me because I don't think he's a doctrinaire, ideological
conservative. And Obama most certainly is no doctrinaire liberal. They both
have a pragmatic, one-problem-at-a-time approach, to greater or lesser
degrees.


I think it's the "as they see it" part that bothers me most.

I would doubt anyone who thinks he has answers to today's problems.
Most people still wonder what the questions are...


So I can't identify what you wish you had here, in terms of choices, and
what you find objectionable about the candidates we have. If you're
suggesting you want some more choices, I suggest you look first at Italy and
Israel to see what that implies. My opinion about that has been shaped by a
year of studying comparative politics in Europe more than by the sketchy
history we have of multiple parties in the US, but my conclusion is that
real multi-party politics inherently stinks to high heaven. It's all a
matter of coalitions ganging up on other coalitions, broad national
interests be damned.


BINGO.

And, pardon my high school education, but wasn't the original idea to
PROTECT the individual from the whims of the masses?

AND from the whims of our government?!


As for big business having an excessive amount of political power in this
country, yes, during most of our lifetimes. We have four important elites in
this country -- business/professional, academic, military, and political.
They're all pretty open meritocracies, compared to the elites of most other
countries. Fortunately the military elite remains subservient. The academic
elite, which ruled during Kennedy's and Johnson's administrations, and part
of Carter's, are not held in very high esteem these days. So the political
and business/professional elites are in charge. And an elite necessarily
will be in charge. There is no successful alternative.


Why?

Because they want to be?

Because they would rather tell me what to do than allow me to tell them
what to do?

Seems a self serving idea at the least.


We may be near the end of the business/professional's reign of power;
they're currently regarded about the same as the way we regarded the
academic elite around 1966 - 1978. They're now regarded as failures in terms
of governance, as any individual elite will be if their expertise is
interpreted too broadly or for too long. The popular impression now is that
their interests are not really the country's interests.

Now we're expecting the political elite to put it all in perspective and to
rise to the top, keeping business and academic elites' ideas in check to
serve the interests of the country. That's a big order, since we've allowed
the business elite to acquire so much power, and for its tentacles to reach
into every corner of society.



You can't expect high-level politicians to turn it all around at once. We've
been too acquiescent in the process ourselves. I look for the apparent
motivations of the candidates and the likelihood that they'll put elite
ideas in perspective, and that they'll find a way to implement some shifting
of power towards the ideal political, the politics as Aristotle described
it, by using power to undermine power. At the same time, I'm looking for
real intellegence and popular support for a leader so they'll be able to
make some positive things happen.

That doesn't feel to me like a self-interest focus, although, in the end,
I'm talking about my own ideas of how things should be, so I guess that's
self-interest. It isn't narrow economic self-interest.

Yep.
But neither are my concerns.

Does that sound alien to you? Or are you thinking of something similar,
without going to so much length to describe it? g


No, actually, I think you have touched on some of the things that bother
me most.


Elitism will always be with us.
And always be our curse.

I don't have your faith in politicians.
I think I once did. But no longer.

It comes back to motives.

Business wants money.
Politicians want to stay in power.
Academics want to grade us.
Evangelist want to save us.

Who, of all the groups on earth, can help us live together?


--
Ed Huntress




--

Richard

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