Here’s a thought or if you’re Michael Skube this would qualify as unvarnished opinion, which is exactly what I intended –no one reads this blog but me anyway! All the candidates vying for the presidential nomination from all parties can put to rest the health care issue once and for all by pledging that every citizen will receive the same health care plan, at the same cost as every member of Congress. While I am euphoric with simple, obvious solutions, let’s just go ahead and extend all those retirement benefits that Congress enjoys to our citizenry as well –we have been throwing money into a bottomless pit named Iraq for years now so it’s high time we readjusted our portfolio. John Edwards’ demeanor may be characterized as approaching Willie Stark, the demagogic politician in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All the Kings Men, but his recurrent theme of two America’s in need of change has the ring of truth.
Instead of simplicity we are given excuses why things fail, complex ratiocinations where truth is obscured or eschewed for reasons only those who are willing to barter like Goethe’s Faust, can comprehend. There is a dearth of understanding and empathy in the candidates today; a poverty of the tragic sensibility that was so compelling and prominent in the campaigns of Jack and Bobby Kennedy. I’m not calling for a return to a mythic Camelot or asking Fleetwood Mac to pull an old song out of their vault of hits to fuel a resurgence for one of the presidential hopefuls. I want substance, the unadorned elegance Bobby Kennedy found in George Bernard Shaw’s writing:
Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.
