The Religion of Change

Political observers love to talk about change. At any given time it seems that every non-incumbent politician calls him or herself the agent of change. In 2006 the Democrats came to power promising to be the party of change.

The 2008 political season began last night in Iowa. I am somewhat an outside observer, as I have no candidate I stand behind at this point. It seems like the caucus goers in Iowa bought the change argument by choosing Huckabee and Obama.

Change is very popular because surveys tell us all the time that people are not happy with the direction of the country. This is always misinterpreted to mean that the party in power is the reason. These same surveys usually tell us that they are happy with their own lives and mostly optimistic about their own future. What about this, then? We are a diverse people. While the parties are split fairly evenly with most people today identifying themselves as Democrats, the coalitions in the parties are very diverse. In any year a factory worker in the Midwest may describe himself as a Republican, but then a year or two later as a Democrat. The extremes of both parties are what is static. Someone who is interested in nationalizing health care, is always going to identify themselves as a Democrat. Someone whose top issue is anti abortion will nearly always be a Republican.

The middle is what changes. We as voters need to define what change means to us. The change that Barak Obama promises is very different than the change that Mike Huckabee will promise. Additionally change for change sake is not always good. After 2006 when the House and Senate Democrats promised change, and they did to a point. They accomplished very little, but passed a lot of non-binding resolutions detailing what they believed in. In each budget bill they still pass tons of earmarks, they push the military to the point of nearly running out of money, but of course don't have the courage to cut off funding for Iraq and Afghanistan even though their number one promise to their faithful is just that. So here we are in their second year, and very little real change. That is usually the case. The reason is simple. As soon as they take office they are the incumbent and have to start defending their position that they will have to run for in either two or six years forward. They then have to not offend anyone. At that point some other politician starts planning their campaign of change.

My advice, demand to know what change means to each politician planning it. Ask yourself, can this actually happen? The democrats promised to get our of Iraq. Did they have a change with a slim two vote majority in the Senate and a Republican President? Of course not. They promised to return to fiscal responsibility and fiscal transparency. Did they have a chance? Their entire platform depends on giving more services to the people. How can they do that and be fiscally responsible? Again no chance. My last advice, lets all be grown ups. If it sounds like someone in government promising to give you services, provided by government more efficiently than private enterprise and not raise your taxes, ask yourself if this is possible. On the other side, if a Republican tells you they can solve immigration problems in one term ask yourself if this is possible. They need to give us real plans, that have a chance to be enacted that will make the problems we face better. If they tell you they have a program to be administered by government that will solve our problems, ask them if they are selling the Brooklyn Bridge as well. You have as much chance of buying the bridge than those programs being passed and working.