How far have we strayed away from the visions the Founding Fathers had for the government of the United States of America?
But the difference you see today is the arguments are over what is best for a particular political party, over what is best for the nation as a whole. Sometimes those may overlap, but party promotion generally wins out.
The primary goal of elected officials today is to be re-elected at the end of their current term. That means an inordinate amount of their time and efforts must be devoted to raising money for the next election, whether it is through making endless phone calls to wealthy donors, or flying across country to meet with the same in fund-raising events.
Keeping the party majority in government is the top priority, and as we have seen for the last several decades, bipartisan compromise is all but dead in US government today. And when the balance of power shifts from one to the other, the first few years are spent either passing partisan legislation to cater to the donor base of the party, or undoing the partisan legislation passed by the previous party that catered to their donor base.
Consequently, most meaningful legislation is subject to being overturned by the next administration, or the next session of Congress, just as the Republicans plan to repeal and replace Obamacare as soon as possible. Likely, in four years, should the Democrats retake the majority, the same thing will happen all over again.
The only thing Congress seems to be able to agree upon is pork-barrel bills, designed to spend money in a representative’s home district to ensure the chances of being re-elected. And we wonder why the nation is head over heels in debt.
The Founding Fathers never envisioned it would take a million dollars in campaign costs to win a job that pays $174,000 per year. They also never envisioned the American public would allow the same people to serve for 25-30 years in Congress, nor that these same people would put the interests of their own power control over the interest of the nation. As wise as they were, they never saw what partisan politics would do to their beloved United States.
Almost to a man, they called upon divine guidance to get them through the difficult decisions they had to make to build the United States into what was the envy of the world’s oppressed.
I worry nothing short of that will allow the country to continue in that role.
