The Only Debate Worth Having
Let’s stop having the conversations politicians want us to have. Let’s not get all frothy about abortion, guns, healthcare and immigrants as if they were issues that just cropped up yesterday. Harry Truman was pitching national healthcare seventy years ago. Reagan was talking immigration reform four decades ago in his first primary debates. Gun rights were settled before a shot was fired two hundred and forty years back, and only the Court can do anything about abortion.
Yet we keep running to the polls as if this time, it will matter.
One of the two hundred and fifty seven reasons the Roman Empire fell was that the Senate went up for sale to the highest bidder. After that, Imperial policy became all about money. Sound familiar? Congress spends half its time getting checks from donors and political parties. Small wonder that domestic policy then centers around tax cuts and corporate welfare and chopping benefits and whether American companies are making enough profit. No surprise that foreign policy becomes about mineral rights and trade deals and tariffs and deploying our military wherever defense contractors can make a buck.
The elephant in the room isn’t Donald Trump, or whoever gets to use the White House bathroom in 2021. It’s the fact that people with money can buy the laws they want. The voters? We’re all voting to keep our guns or give up our healthcare. A 22 trillion dollar national debt isn’t a big deal so long as open carry is on the line. 22 combat veterans committing suicide every day gets a blind eye while we gaze at the border, or the sky.
Let’s have this conversation: if you, Candidate Over There, do not favor a Constitutional amendment term limiting members of Congress to twelve years in office, get off the stage. If you don’t support a Constitutional amendment barring all money in elections except a capped individual contribution, go home. If you’re a current member of Congress and you want to impress me, introduce those bills before the next debate. Because without these things, we’ll keep getting the same government we’ve had since Richard Nixon flew home in disgrace.
The only statesmen we have left are the ones who aren’t running for anything. Let us not gnash our teeth about the Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi we have. Let’s make sure no Mitch McConnell can ever slouch his way toward Washington again. Take money and seniority out of Congress, and what would they have to do other than legislate in the interest of the nation? The parties, no longer able to decide who gets what ads in which battleground state, can merely come up with a policy agenda and convince their members to play along. Only now the members have to care about what their constituents think. We would control the conversation.
And whatever would lobbyists DO all day?
Cashing a check is easy; serving the country is hard. We made a deal with Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and everyone who’s ever sacrificed for the ideals we learned about in middle school. We’ll never get there as long as the government is for sale. If you’re fired up to make this election the one you stand outside all day in the rain for, make it count.
That’s the conversation I want to have. That’s the conversation the Romans would love to have with us, if only they could.
