A Tribute to American Politics
Allen Finkelstein D.O.
May 4, 2006
I am a small town family doctor. I find that physicians often need to “oversimplify” situations in order to treat and cure illness. Most physicians, it seems to me, make poor politicians for this reason. In politics, simple solutions may often lead to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” Senator Frist feeling that appointing judges to reconstruct the Constitution along political and religious lines would somehow cure all of our social ills and Howard Dean explaining the President’s poor response to Katrina as racism, somehow do not qualify as good medical judgment, do they?
Carl Rove realized that his “illiterate” candidate could beat the Democrats’ “illiterate” candidate in a “fair fight,” this, apparently, since Carl Rove was not as illiterate as his counterpart, Terry McAuliffe. Introducing absurd issues like Federal control of gay marriage and partial birth abortion was a stroke of genius. Gay marriage, a state issue, is certainly not on the minds of most Americans, except maybe the addled brain of Senator Kerry who should have thrown it back to the states (along with his underage Vice-Presidential candidate). As for partial birth abortions, a strictly emergency procedure done on virtually nonviable encephalopathic or anencephalic fetuses (no brain)- to avoid severe injury or death to the mother, neither uninformed candidate realized that the procedure could never be elective, anyway.
The upshot of the matter is that we had two candidates that could not compromise. In order to compromise, one needs to at least try to understand the other’s position. Neither Bush nor Kerry seemed to understand even his own position. Take the President; his Vice-President engineers a premature war in Iraq and perhaps even in Afghanistan in order to suspend as much of the Constitution as possible and to gain windfall profits for his buddies at Haliburton. At the same time, Mr. Bush thinks that he is on a crusade to save 40 million people from Saddam Hussein for the sake of Democracy and Christianity.
Senator Kerry, instead of apologizing for not doing any of his own research, blames his ignorant and incompetent vote on being misled by President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Why would anyone in his right mind believe these two comedic figures to begin with??? Anyone researching himself, for ten minutes, would know that they were lying. It couldn’t have anything to do with trying to make a patriotic impression on his illiterate and patently stupid constituents? Voting against crusades is currently un-American, un-Christian and even, I am ashamed to say, un-Jewish, for that matter. Amazingly enough, there is no shortage of illiterate Jews either.
The real problem we faced in the last election has to do with “love:” (1) The love affair between the Republican Party and the “pre-fundamentalist, retarded, remedial” religionists- people that still believe in the early biblical and Islamic ideas long abandoned by their religions- including killing in the name of their God and an unhealthy disregard for civil law and order. This is really amazing in the case of Christianity, which, even in its infancy never embraced killing in the name of anyone. (2) The love affair between John Kerry and the small, relatively unimportant special interest groups like gay/lesbian, pro-choice activists and attorneys. (I actually agree with most of their views- except for attorneys, of course), but none of these groups’ desires are of significant national importance and all can be placated by even half-witted arbitrators. What about blue collar workers, taxpayers, elderly, sick, war veterans and live children???
The problem is that as a politician, I should not care less what anyone wants. “Desire” is an issue for lovers and family members. I want to know what people need. If I know what two adversaries need, I may well execute a compromise between them.
Find me the politicians and statesmen on both sides of the political spectrum that actually care about what people need: names like Bill Thomas, Joe Biden, Arlen Specter, Joe Lieberman, Chuck Hagel, Barbara Feinstein, John McCain, and Ed Rendel come to mind. Why not pay attention to these people? Great Americans all, but the best our illustrious and beyond corrupt parties can nominate is two alcoholics and two ignorant attorneys: a real tribute to American politics.
-Allen Finkelstein D.O.