Tuesday’s election was indeed historic. Now, before anyone jumps up and down and hoots and hollers, I’m not talking about who won. Rather, I’m talking about who didn’t.
A couple billion dollars passed hands in the past year or so, the most costly election in history. And what changed? Nothing.
As the Janmeister and I talked about this somewhat stupifying election, she passed on something her grandma once said, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.”
It is a sad truth in our lives, unfortunately. On Tuesday, we could have made huge changes in the direction of the country. And no, I’m not talking about who is in the White House. Don’t need to go there and I’m not going to, as this is my view of the world, and quite frankly, neither choice was riveting, inspiring or going to magically wave a wand and solve all our problems.
There’s a reason for that. Congress. Even though our approval of them is at an all time low, we just returned almost all the bastards back to office. So, we’re left with gridlock once again. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Presidential Pendulum had swung the other way. Just as the House is going to block anything Obama wants to do, the Democratically controlled Senate would have blocked everything Mitt wanted to do.
As I said, nothing has changed, except the bank accounts of strategists, pundits and media companies who all made a killing off this total waste of our time.
Oh, I hear you wailing again. Democracy isn’t a waste of time. No, it doesn’t have to be. But at least at the national level, it was a waste. Four years ago, we could have just gave everyone an eight year term and get virtually the same results. Yes, a seat or two swung one way or another. But in the end, we still have the same results that ended in zero results for the last four years.
The last Congress passed just 173 bills. That seems like a lot. But did you know that the Congress Harry Truman once tagged “the Do Nothing Congress,” passed 908 bills between January 1947 and December 1948. That is not a typo. And out of those 173 bills, did Congress do anything significant? No. They didn’t deal with the debt, with a failing postal system, immigration reform – nothing. They couldn’t even pass a bill to normalize trade with Russia, which would seem like a no brainer. An easy-peasy bill as they say.
Sure, the Democrats are jumping for joy and the Republicans are licking their wounds. For the next several months, there will be lots of analysis about what happened, none of which really matters. Which is why I offer up my own analysis and theory, the Science of Sucks.
Americans aren’t as optimistic as they once were. They certainly aren’t inspired by any candidate’s agenda. Hell, the candidates aren’t even exciting, not like a Kennedy or Reagan. They are milquetoast.
So, we are left to the Science of Sucks. We don’t choose the person who’s the best choice. Instead, we choose the one that sucks less. We do it all the time in our lives.
We often stay in a dead end job because the one that is available across the street or across the country may suck even more. We are risk adverse by nature. Sure, we’ll gripe about our job because it sucks so, but hey, it’s better than that other job because at least we know how much our job sucks – it’s a known quantity.
The Science of Sucks crosses the spectrum of our lives. We may live in a sucky neighborhood. Yes, it sucks, and there are better neighborhoods out there. But we’d have to bother packing, find a new place to live, shell out some hard earned dough for a moving truck and perhaps a deposit. So we endure. We convince ourselves that the screams for help in the dark of night and the random gunshots are something we can live with because the new place may suck even more.
Sound familiar? We are a society of habituals. We like the familiar. Sure, our wife may be a total bitch or our husband a do-nothing louse, but we already know this. True, perhaps somewhere out there, there is indeed a Prince Charming. But even he may turn into a toad at the least inopportune moment. Fifty percent of the guy or gal we have works for us most of the time. Why risk getting someone who could be even more of a do-nothing husband or a wife that is an even bigger bitch?
See the parallels here in this election? We categorically state that Congress sucks. They are the do-nothing bastards. Our own do-nothing bastard, our local Congressman, however, well, we return him or her to office because the other guy they are running against might suck more. He could conceivably be an even bigger do-nothing than what we have already.
And yet, there’s that niggling feeling that perhaps we’re afraid that the other guy might actually do something instead. Something we may not like. As I said, the devil we know instead of the devil we don’t know.
If anyone noticed, I didn’t jump for joy this election, at least not at the federal level. For all the negative campaigning, finger pointing and character assassination, we continue on with the status quo. Yes, it sucks. But we seem to like it that way, not only in politics, but in a lot of aspects of our lives.
Even I, the guy who has taken some really big risks, has wished I had stayed with the devil I knew instead of the devil I didn’t know at times. I guess it’s just the way the world works, or in the case of our federal government, the way it doesn’t work. And in the end, we only have ourselves to blame.
In the Emerald City, working at a job that definitely sucks less than the last one,
– Robb