A Plague of Political Gnats — Tiny-Teapot Pettiness across the Spectrum of American Leadership

© 2012 Peter Free

 

11 July 2012

 

 

Introduction — two points to this essay

 

These are:

 

(1) American political leadership consists of people with the courage and moral stature of fleas.

 

(2) America’s future is being sucked dry by these squabbling mites and by the people who vote for them.

 

 

Point One — “Well made, Mr. Milbank”

 

Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, drew attention to the “legislative dwarfism” that marks American political leadership today:

 

Walk into the reception room off the Senate floor, and frescoes of the chamber’s giants gaze at you from all directions: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun from the 19th century; Robert La Follette, Robert A. Taft, Arthur Vandenberg and Robert F. Wagner from the 20th century.

 

There is no longer a revered figure — a Byrd, a Dole, a Moynihan, a Chafee, a Nunn, a John Warner — whose authority could transcend party and the usual arithmetic of vote counting.

 

Some have died. Some have retired.

 

Others, such as Hatch and John McCain, have been lost to the exigencies of survival in a hyperpartisan political system.

 

You don’t have to go back to Daniel Webster to appreciate the current plague of legislative dwarfism. When Hatch came to the Senate in 1977, he was surrounded by contemporaneous and future giants: Jackson, Javits, Muskie, McGovern, Baker, Goldwater — and a 44-year-old Ted Kennedy.

 

Their bloodlines have all run dry.

 

© 2012 Dana Milbank, The missing giants of the Senate, Washington Post (10 July 2012) (paragraph split)

 

 

Point Two — Small-souled-ness is suddenly fashionable

 

Can you imagine anyone among this Rabble of Squawkers doing anything historically admirable — under any circumstances?

 

Probably not.

 

These are the equivalent of America’s lowest common denominator.  Their miserable professional performances reflect the small-souled pettiness that has overtaken American culture.

 

Being courageous, outside the military, is no longer fashionable.  Personal honor is a concept relegated to forgotten trash bins.  A sense of the Worth of the Whole has been lost in the tumult of narrowness.

 

None of America’s current political leadership stands for anything more than their abysmally small selves.

 

And the American media consistently celebrate stories of addicted losers and criminals — simultaneously distorting the meaning of the word “hero” to virtually anyone who does their job properly.

 

What kind of moral and semantic standards are these?

 

 

The moral? — In a democracy, we ultimately get the government we deserve

 

Sadly so.

 

There are giants still among us.  We just don’t vote for them.  America’s decline is self-inflicted.