Don't swallow flimsy claims of national Democrats and Republicans that they stand for genuine, uplifting principles. Motivations for their existence now are purely egocentric. While the public good is a forgotten purpose, the parties buckle to special interests and relentlessly trash each other like bad-blood in-laws.
A few, very few, Republicans finally are disgusted with their party's antics. Senior GOP senators and a few donors have rebuked the national GOP official who concocted literature denigrating President Obama and his color and promoting "fear" and "ego" as fundraising lures. Thereafter, a Republican public relations buffoon in Tennessee also was quickly stripped of a tourism contract after posting an Internet visual of first lady Michelle Obama morphing into a chimpanzee.
For national Democrats, too, performances have been depressing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a pathetic excuse for a leader, ran for cover rather than demanding immediate resignation from his post when Ways and Means Chair Charlie Rangel's corrupt behavior dripped out in headlines. Shame, too, on Democrats who're tolerating New York Gov. David Paterson's refusal to resign after he tried muscle on a victim of his chief aide's physical abuse.
President Obama can take scant pride in his record. He's squandered enormous public confidence with more than a year of indecision, flip flops, broken promises, abdication of leadership, a series of discredited appointees, hollow vows to "fight" for his collapsing agenda and capitulation to Republican threats.
For that matter, what sort of history are Republicans writing for their party with a blood oath to oppose every Obama initiative?
The GOP, moreover, beds down with scurrilous racists such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and is petrified about offending the Tea Party's street rabble if it rejects scatterbrain Sarah Palin as too simple-minded to be president.
The vanity-driven U.S. Senate honors traditions that can bring the government to a standstill over national needs. Whimpering with pique because their personal demands weren't satisfied, three senators—DeMint of North Carolina, Bunning of Kentucky and Shelby of Alabama—paralyzed senate action for weeks with their personal privilege to put a "hold" on voting. Tyranny by ol' boy custom.
Need we mention again the Democrats and Republicans, including a presidential hopeful, who shamed their offices with licentious sexual misconduct?
Excusing this 21st-century malfeasance, depravity, slander, corruption, cowardice, negligence and indifference as no worse than the behavior of political ancestors of the 1800s is bunk. The American political class presumably would mature and acquire more refined manners and deeper intellect in a century of evolution.
Come to think of it, probably not.
