Rebuttal: A Gale is Blowing

I wrote this in a letter to the editor of the Kingman Daily Miner of Kingman, AZ in response to an editorial which indicated that young people are not satisfied with politics and politicians.... Duh!

I read reporter Gail Adams' fluff piece (Aug. 9th), rehashing the perpetual disjunction between the young and the old especially involving politics - where the young, driven primarily by hormones, complain about how lousy the world is, but expect their elders to do all of the work to fix it!

They probably were looking out the window in civics class when they were informed that one has to be over 35 to be elected president for the simple reason that until a person is about 25, she doesn't have the mental maturity (read: common sense) to drive a car, say nothing of run a nation!

Yes, we have a primitive two party system for the simple reason that a third party never has and never will win an election. We aren't set up Constitutionally for coalition (parliamentary) governments like most of the rest of the world. And yes, when running for office the two parties can get vicious - however, I don't see a "youth party" being all that different - and perhaps they'd be even more violent.

I suspect that if you drop in on either a local Republican or Democratic party meeting - which should be published regularly on page two here in the Miner, an adult (read: ‘volunteer') of any age would be welcome with open arms! However, I'm sure you'll find that the only ones who take the civic trouble to hobble in are well over fifty! They're all tired and hurt most of the time - but someone's gotta do it.

Yes, our government's a mess - we all know it! Supposedly in a Democracy (which we aren't) the majority rules! Right? Not so! Neither party can pass significant legislation in the Senate without the Aye vote of 60 Senators! Conversely, it only takes 41 Senators to block the measure. So the fact that the Democrats after many years finally have a majority of the members, they can't seem to scrape up enough Republicans to help them pass even so called "bi-partisan" bills co-written by senators from both parties!

And then, there is the war and the administration. A good 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the American people of all parties are opposed to the Iraq war, the lack of military aggressiveness toward Al Caida and the Taliban, and, in general, the fact that the Bush administration simply doesn't care what the people think from either party ("We don't watch the polls!"). There have been plenty of Republicans from Congress who have tried to get the President to heed their counsel, but he seems to think he knows best. And he holds the trump cards.

So what can we do? Well, not much. We could impeach the president and vice-president in the House of Representatives which would bring all legislative business to a halt - just as it did when the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton, and nothing would get done until about 2008. Or we can just wait it out and elect a new president in 2008. I'm not sure, but if we were to impeach the President he would still be in office until the Senate held a trial and, if found guilty, would throw him out of office. Problem is that there are probably enough of the president's men in the Senate to prevent finding him guilty. So besides besmirching the president's ‘legacy' which is already besmirched, where is the gain?

So, Ms Adams, did any of your young friends come up with any answers to the above problems? It is awfully easy to be a critic!