Wherefore the Wise
October 23, 2010
There seems to be a rapidly advancing problem in our country, one that has been ignored for far too long. We suffer from an ever increasing lack of wisdom. Like a disease out of control, the problem has spread to Republicans and Democrats, Congressmen, Senators, our current President and even the Supreme Court. The last of our “old” wise men and women, sadly, is very old now and noone in either party listens to him. For some reason, James Baker is not on Mr. Obama’s list of advisors. Even more sad is the fact that so few of the remaining “wise men and women” seem to have Washington’s ear. Except for Baker, Republicans have noone “wise” within their leadership “cabal.” While Baker has been virtually excommunicated, people like Joe Scarborough and Karen Hughes make certain that they keep their distance from the bigotry and amorality of the Republican leadership. Meanwhile, Colin Powell has been forced to become an independent.
In the Democratic arena extremely intelligent and energetic people like Anthony Weiner, Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich, honest and deeply concerned, seem to lack true wisdom. They seem undisciplined and impractical, their laudable plans so often painfully out of sequence. Emotional and “quick on the draw,” they seem to take two steps backward for each step forward. Rahm Emanuel who seems to be a wise man, is leaving the President’s staff after the Chief Executive refused to listen to his “wise” counsel on so many issues, especially health care. Howard Dean, a wise man and talented executive, seemed to be supremely qualified to be president except for one thing: his appearance. Like Senator Paul Simon, whose funny ears and bow tie never appealed to a shamefully illiterate voting public, Dean’s frank demeanor and plain appearance do not appeal to those same people. Worse yet, Dean was not ultra liberal enough for the left wing fanatics who are running the party and the moderate majority, built by Dean and Emanuel, into the ground. Democrats, who are supposed to represent their constituents are, instead, dominated by a relatively few naive left wing power brokers.
Unfotunately, there is no Patrick Moynihan to rein in out of control ultra progressives and bring them back to fiscal reality. There are only those “silent voices” of the Jim Webbs, the Barbara Feinsteins, the Elizabeth Warrens as well as Emanuel and Dean, silent only because their party does not listen. A die hard liberal all my life, I can see my party frittering away all of our liberal goals! Congress’s best representative gave up any hope of being Speaker in order to serve his President, while the most productive Senator during her six years in office did the same thing to serve as Secretary of State. They left their seats in the hands of a talented, but short sighted ultra liberal in the House and a pleasant, moderate and humble man in the Senate, one who sometimes has virtually no understanding of the bills he passes. He is an expert in “pork” and may well lose his seat to a virtual nitwit, illiterate and without social graces, who seems spirited and advocates violence. In short, the antithesis of Mr. Reid, she is the darling of so many brain dead voters who need to be careful what they wish for.
Wise men learn from their mistakes. They learn on the job. Hopefully Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton learned from their mistakes and will be doing their own homework in the future. Bill Clinton seems to have learned a lesson in self control and has apologized for helping to deregulate oil futures. The Senior Bush stopped destroying South American and Eastern European economies after a “heart to heart” with his Secretary of State, James Baker and told Milton Friedman and the “Neopsychotics” to “take a hike.” He then proceeded to save the economy from the ravages of poor President Reagan’s second (absentee) term. It is time for our new president to do his own homework. He can instruct his vacuous “Attorney General” to start freeing political prisoners still rotting in American Gulags. Why he appointed “Uncle Tom Holder,” the man who made mistake after mistake in his tenure as Assistant and later Acting Attorney General during the Clinton Administration under the sorry leadership of Janet Reno, is a really embarrassing question. The appointment of a man now deteriorated into a virtual sociopath, constantly obstructing justice, going out of his way to protect corrupt Bush appointed federal prosecutors who still proudly and routinely suborn perjury is, of course, a disgrace, Mr. President. It’s not exactly what a “wise” man would do. In fact, the question is: While Holder continues to burn our Constitution with the help of prosecutorial concubines the likes of Leura Canary, Alice Martin and Louis Franklin, will our current President continue to fiddle?
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.