Who's Minding the Store?

Who within our current administration is actually the one driving the wheel? Does anyone really know? Or more to the point - does anymore even care? During previous administrations the country had a pretty good hunch who was calling the shots, and if they were wrong, well we were certainly the last ones to know. With no around the clock cable news outlets, and no slobbery - get a life hyena lurking about in his basement - always ready to suddenly swoop down and pounce on every crooked eyebrow raised, the country had no way of knowing what went on behind sealed doors except for what a handful of news people reported back to them.

Yet today we have every kind of communication skill possible to help get us information from nearly every point in this entire globe, and still we have no real sense of what is happening. This speaks to all the creme de la creme leaders in our country. Not just the president and his personal henchmen provided by daddy. This speaks to all the senate and house people as well. No matter how much you may listen to a Chris Matthew or a Ted Russert, and watch them as they strive to get a real pulse from the people they're interviewing, at best all you'll hear back is another stale rendition of their party's finest talking points.

Sure this belt loosened slightly last week when all the townspeople of this great nation finally got together on the same page (and praise the Lord that they did!) but in a few more hours that fine bravado will change back to superficial speak. We constantly want to forget that underneath all that rhetoric and smooth sound bites there beats the heart of a politician. And the end game of any politician is to be re-elected, and if any man or woman wants to run for president you know that their ego matter is not cut from the same cloth as your average Joe or Josephine. Their ambition and drive is so much more superior to yours or mine they can easily spin out of control. And the friction from all that metal hitting metal spontaneously combusts them - think Al Gore dramatically kissing his wife in front of the entire world, or John Kerry when he stood back and said absolutely nothing to refute those disgusting swift boat ads. What were these guys thinking??? Answer: they weren't. Their campaign managers and handlers were doing all the thinking for them and they were just as much out of touch with reality as the candidates themselves were for hiring and listening to them in the first place.

Our forefathers did not live in an ivory tower when they were busting their behinds to bring this country together. They led very hard lives and so did their families. They actually rolled back their sweaty sleeves and did scarifice to be where they were. Their souls were not with the lobbyists or their next campaign fund raisers. They were fastly connected to the moment and they had to push themselves to their endurance to do what they thought was right at the time, and obviously they didn't all that bad because we're still a country and our country's constitution, not counting Ann Coulters' perverse influence, is more or less still intact

Maybe it would help all politicians, regardless of rank, to stay grounded more if it was required that once a month they had to privately view the 1972 movie The Candidate with Robert Redford. Oh for the good old days of bird flu and mad cow disease. I'll even take the cuban missle crisis over what is happening today. At least there are photos and footage of JFK and his brother Bobby in real angst while they deliberated over how to manage that dire situation. Now we have Armageddon again waiting in the wings and footage of Bush flaming the flames.