Herman

Cain

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May 19, 2008

America Needs to Move Forward, but Congress Has the Car in Neutral

Another attitudinal poll was just published by National Public Radio (May 15, 2008), indicating that “80 percent of likely voters surveyed said the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction.” Real Clear Politics has even tracked these “wrong direction or right direction” polls for years, but no one explains how these same geniuses surveyed would define the right direction.

In fact, it should not be surprising that this attitude of heading in the wrong direction has increased from 51 percent in November of 2006 to 80 percent today, since the Democratic leaders in Congress, the Democratic presidential primary candidates and most of the mainstream media have been screaming “wrong direction” to the public for most of George W. Bush’s years as president.

Out of frustration, I did my own non-scientific survey of listeners to my radio show by posing the question that if 80 percent of the people truly do believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, then what would be the right direction?

I responded to calls constantly for the entire three-hour show, and received a laundry list of suggestions we should be doing as a country to move forward.

Most people made suggestions that were not new, nor were they new to the weekly topics I have been writing and talking about for the last two years.

Namely, this country should make the current tax rates permanent and quickly replace the tax code with the FairTax, remove restrictions on oil exploration in ANWR and the continental boundaries of our own country, develop a serious energy independence strategy, stop the tsunami spending with a balanced budget amendment, and do not compromise our national security.

Obviously, there were a few callers who believe all our national woes are summed up in two words, Bush and Cheney. And as expected, they offered absolutely no credible solutions other than to cut and run in Iraq, raise taxes on the rich, make government bigger and have an all-Democratic Congress and a Democratic president. That is their dream scenario.

It is my nightmare scenario.

But caller after caller of informed intelligent thinkers offered variations on the things we know we should and could do except for one major barrier . . . political partisanship in Congress.

Thus emerged my “Aha!” moment.

The difference between the wrong direction and the right direction is not what should be done. It is doing what should be done.

We are in neutral.

Congress is deadlocked on just about everything except pandering to the public with little drop-in-the-bucket ideas. This is also not new news.

Furthermore, these polls keep asking the wrong question and getting an answer to the question they did not ask. If the pollsters want to take the public’s temperature every week, they should ask, “What should be done to get the U.S. moving forward?”

People want this country to get off the dime, but Congress is the problem.

The Democrats control Congress, but they do not want to do anything that might make the Republicans look good to an already frustrated public. It might hurt their quest for more seats in Congress and the White House in the November elections.

The Republicans in Congress just can’t seem to get their act together to take some bold ideas to the public – real solutions that might get people excited. They continue to use the same rhetoric that lost them the majority in 2006.

The president appears to be in cruise control.

Meanwhile, the greatest country in the world remains in neutral.  

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