In the Land of Hyperbole, the Reasoned Argument is King

I actually looked up the word hyperbole today (with thanks to  Dictionary.com):

hy·per·bo·le:  noun Rhetoric .

1. obvious and intentional exaggeration.

2. an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”

Having listened recently to the Administration’s ministrations on Sequestration (trying saying that three times fast), I am left to wonder whether they were intentionally exaggerating, or they were making figures of speech not to be taken literally.  Either way, they certainly took us on a journey into the Land of Hyperbole.  It was a rhetorical magical mystery tour of horribles.  But, I woke up this morning and drove into work like any other day.  No less traffic than typical.  My power at work was on.  The systems were working.  Nothing was different other than the date, 1 March 2013, the day I had been told all hell would break loose.

I have heard of no teachers being fired today (other than Arne Duncan’s debunked pink slip slip-up).  But I wouldn’t have because this school year was already funded.  The impact to local school districts that could lose money is in reality unknown.  Will teachers be laid off – I don’t know but I suspect local communities might actually rally around their schools in the event layoffs result.

I checked to see what the airline flight delays were like.  With a tip of the hat to some irony, I checked fly.faa.gov as my authoritative source.  No flights delays, the map was green.  But, just in case that directorate of the FAA had succumbed to the Sequester blues, I checked flightstats.com, and confirmed no delays.  According to reports, I should check back in April when the effects will really be seen . . . honest it’s going to be really bad . . . just wait . . .

I was concerned about my taxes.  After all, with all these furloughs how was the IRS going to process our returns?  But, not to worry, the IRS has said any furloughs would happen after tax season.  I guess there was some flexibility after all.

I am waiting for a by-name list of the 230 kids in Wyoming who might not be able to get vaccines because of a $16,000 dollar reduction in federal spending.   I am waiting for the boil order for my water given the sudden, drastic decrease in funding for clean water.  I feel for the 170 million folks Representative Waters claims will lose their jobs as a result of the Sequester.  I am upset the Sequester has so restricted food safety inspectors that horsemeat found its way into Taco Bell products.  Oh, wait, that happened before today.  Never mind.

I am of two minds when it comes to the Sequester.  I think spending should be cut and the Sequester serves as a forcing function that does not require politicians to actually have to go on record with any priorities.  But, I am not a fan of the one-size-fits-all approach.  If you have ever been the gal caught between Petite and Regular you will understand. 

The whirling dervish of non-sense surrounding the Sequester has hidden the real problem.  The Senate has not passed a budget in 4 years, the budgeting baseline is flawed as a result, and the use of continuing resolutions prevents flexibility and undermines reliability.  Organizations only know what their funding level is for the term of the CR.  How can you plan financially when your budget hops along week to week, or month to month?  How can you appropriately contract and pay for those activities that require sustained funding?  Don’t take my word for it.  According to Rear Admiral Kirby, the Navy’s Chief of Information: 

“Unless a spending bill is passed quickly by the new Congress, we may be forced to operate under the same CR that has been sustaining us since the beginning of this fiscal year. This CR is set to expire at the end of March. Should Congress decide to extend the CR through the end of FY13, the Navy and Marine Corps would not have enough money to meet FY-13 requirements in these accounts.”  (http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2013/01/16/navy-navigates-continuing-resolution/)

In the end the Sequester proved one thing:  our current crop of politicians lack the fortitude to make the really tough calls.  We can nibble around the edges all we want, but until we address entitlement (non-discretionary spending) reform in the context of deficit reduction, we will not be able to solve this problem for the long-term.  The conversation already includes discretionary spending and revenues (regardless of whether or not you like the answers).  Let’s add the third leg to this budgetary stool and have a reasoned, adult discussion. 

The definition of reason you might ask?   Sound judgment; good sense.  In terms of politics it could be a “Sound Judgment Politician” is an oxymoron, but let us hope that is mere hyperbole.   

If I Had a Hammer, I’d Hammer

There is an old leadership saying that if the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer then everything begins to look like a nail.  I raise this for two reasons:  (1) I believe it’s reflective of the President’s governing style; and (2) I believe it’s reflective of Congress’ approach to problem solving.

Leading is more than campaign events and big speeches.  Leading requires listening not just talking.  Unfortunately, the President, at times very gifted orator and at times a dull professorial speaker, defaults to campaign mode.  I understand he feels he is taking his message to the people, but this isn’t governing.  The constant campaign cycle this creates results in a more rancorous and partisan environment.

You cannot give speeches calling out the other side and blaming them for unsafe food, flight delays, laid off teachers, kids on the streets, dirty water, poisoned air and economic collapse.  You cannot paint the other side as a darker and unrepentant Scrooge.  You cannot set the straw man as an “us or them” proposition and then cry foul when the other side digs in.  You cannot lament extreme partisanship when you stoke the partisan fires.  The oratorical hammer will only nail the door shut to compromise.  It may be time to look at getting some other tools.  I am sure, in addition to shotgun recommendations; the Vice President has some hardware thoughts.

Not that Congress is any better.  When given the chance to find common ground, the “super committee” was anything but and simply punted.  Most Congressional districts are so gerrymandered into safe seats that compromise (on either side of the aisle) could lead to insurgent campaigns from the left or right political flanks.  Smart, nuanced legislation has given way to heavy-handed solutions, such as the Sequester, or, even worse, using continuing resolutions to fund the government piecemeal rather than engaging in a deliberative budgeting process.  When you put the two together you get a sledgehammer of idiocy.

Hagel, Lew and the demon Sequestration

I haven’t written in a while because there has not been much to write about. The president gives a full-throated defense of classic Democratic Liberal positions in his Inaugural Address but the media coverage is dominated by “Beyonce-Gate”. I watched the inauguration. The oratory was not soaring, the themes were tired, and the message both stale and confrontational. No wonder Beyonce’s “did she or didn’t she sing live” stole the show – and no, I do not blame her for the Superdome Blackout.

I confess I could not watch the State of the Union. I am tired of speeches with laundry lists of wants and an absence of solutions. It’s like a Seinfeld episode: “Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States and yada, yada, yada, God Bless the United States of America”. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt and now I am so terribly bored by it all.

Which brings me to Hagel, Lew and Sequestration. At the very least this has been interesting.

Hagel was beyond awful at his confirmation hearing. Yes, the President has the right to pick his team, but only with the advice and consent of the Senate. If you want to be the Secretary of Defense then you ought to be able to (1) articulate the President’s policies and (2) string together cogent sentences. It’s really not that high of a bar and yet I am not sure Hagel cleared it. I respect his service (and understand how that colors his worldview and have no issue with that), but being an enlisted man is no more dispositive of being a good Secretary of Defense than being an officer is. Chuck Hagel will be confirmed, but not in the bipartisan way John Kerry was confirmed. As an aside you have to love Kerry coming out and saying he was asked to take the job before Susan Rice publicly withdrew. If you are going to throw someone under the bus, it is always a good policy to be driving the bus when you do it. But back to Hagel. He will be confirmed but the process has weakened him, not the Republican opposition but the lack of strong support from the Democratic caucus.

Now to Mr. Lew. There is a delicious irony in hearing Democrats who criticized Romney’s overseas investments come to Lew’s defense over his Cayman investments. Lew even channeled Romney when he insisted he had paid all taxes that were owed. Frankly, I don’t care where you invest your money – it is your money! I am far more concerned that as the head of OMB he failed to respond to the Medicare Trigger. Federal law states that ‘If there is a Medicare funding warning under section 801(a)(2) of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 made in a year, the President shall submit to Congress, within the 15-day period beginning on the date of the budget submission to Congress under subsection (a) for the succeeding year, proposed legislation to respond to such a warning.’ OMB has the requirement to submit fiscal proposals to Congress, and yet this did not happen while he was the OMB Director. I don’t care how much money he made at Citigroup (although can you imagine the fun the Democrats would be having with this subject if he was a Bush appointee???). I do care, though, that a Cabinet Secretary well and faithfully execute the laws of the country, even ones that are inconvenient politically and fiscally.

So, this leaves Sequestration. As described, this evil entity is the budgetary equivalent of an amalgamation of Freddy, the Friday the 13th dude, Predator and Aliens. On March 1, if you listen to the pundits, the world, as we know it will cease to exist. The White House (including the President and Jack Lew) devised this budgetary trigger because they thought the other side would blink. In some respects, the other side thinks it did blink when it formalized the new tax rates and as a result increased revenue by $600 billion over the next decade or so.

As a quick aside, I don’t agree they raised taxes because the Bush rates, which were never permanent, had expired. In fact, they were able to make most of the Bush rates permanent and thus established a common budgeting baseline moving forward. Republicans need to learn to take a win where they can. The facts are the facts. The Bush rates had expired and those who voted against the American Taxpayer Relief Act were actually voting for tax increases when they voted “no”. Am I happy about the weird and wacky giveaways hidden in the bill? Nope. But given the alternative I think this was a good compromise, especially because it decoupled taxes and the borrowing limit from Sequestration. After all, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

So the losing approach in the Sequestration battle when the other side thinks it blinked is to go back to the revenue well again without a serious commitment to spending/entitlement reform. Or, as anyone knows who has ever watched a “Die Hard” movie, if you are going to play chicken you had better make sure the other guy is going to swerve first. The White House has overplayed their hand and the Republican are in no mood to compromise. The only way many Republican’s feel they can get spending cuts from this administration is to let Sequestration kick in. It is telling that Republicans are willing to let these cuts hit the Defense Department as the cost of getting budgetary reform and spending reduction on the table. Will it be painful? Maybe, but many entitlement programs are exempted from the mandatory cuts. Is it permanent? Nope – future budgets can restore the cuts. Will anyone outside the Beltway actually notice? Don’t know, but I suspect the doomsayers have probably exaggerated a bit. The good news is this will create a budget baseline that has been missing since the Government has been running on continuing resolutions for years. Maybe the Senate will finally pass a budget.

I remember the shrill warnings about Y2K. It’s hard for me to get worked up about Sequestration –although the perfect storm might be in the mixing of Hagel, Lew and the demon Sequestration.

Newtown

Like many I have been trying to come to terms with what happened in Newtown. I stood in the office on Friday and watched the news with men I work with. With men who have served in combat. I saw their eyes were as red as mine as we tried to maintain composure. As we tried to process what was unfolding before us. I have been so inconsolably sad since then. So sad and so horrified.

I know this is ostensibly a political blog, but politics just seem so much smaller today. I write today as a mom. On Friday I touched based with my 17-year old boy as I was heading out of town. I needed to know if he knew. I needed to know if he was OK. I needed to tell him I loved him. In the ways of the thoroughly modern teenage boy, we texted back and forth. He was OK, he knew, he didn’t want to talk about it and I let him know I loved him.

As any parent of a teenager will tell you, these can be trying times. The eye-rolling, the “Jeez Mom” exclamation, the not so subtle digs at my un-coolness (“Mom, it’s not the eighties anymore”) and the blood-pressure exploding “Mom, just relax” (and its variations) all serve to make some days seem like a never-ending contest of wills. It can be trying. It can be exhausting. But at least I have these moments.

20 little boys and girls were taken from their families in the most senseless and violent of ways. 20 families grieve a loss so deep and so painful one wonders how they will ever survive. 20 families would give anything for the chance at a teenage eye-roll or smart remark. 20 families would give anything to be able to have an argument over homework, bed-time, or an overdue haircut.

If there can be anything good that comes out of this, maybe it is the rest of us have been shown a devastating alternative to what we have. Maybe we will be better parents as a result. Maybe we will hold our kids just a little closer. Maybe we will turn off the TV and sit down to have dinner. Maybe we will slow the pace a bit. Maybe we will cherish more and criticize less.

I know this; my heart is heavy for Newtown, but more full for my son. I have been so blessed he has become a caring, nurturing, inquisitive, sardonic, opinionated, funny, and somewhat irreverent young man. Today, I thank God for every eye-roll and contests of will. I have what 20 families will not have. After Friday, I think I finally understand the gift of life and I will never take it for granted again.

Hold your children. Love them. Celebrate them. Pray they grow old. And maybe even appreciate those teenage years.

An Open Letter to the President: Exit the Circus

Mr. President:

It’s time for you to lead on the fiscal cliff.  Climb out of the little red car, take off the clown shoes and exit the circus.  Perpetual campaigns may play to your oratorical strength but they suck the life out of the people you are supposed to lead.  Your current conduct undermines the very constitutional framework of co-equal branches of government that you are sworn to uphold.

It time for you to really heed the words of Dr. King:

Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.  On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?  There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

Mr. President, we the people, are not complete idiots.  If you raise tax rates on the infamous 2% we understand they will simply hide more income utilizing the plethora of deductions currently in the tax code.  Deductions that ultimately undermine any attempt at progressivity in the tax code you claim to require.  This isn’t about increasing revenue for the Treasury; it’s about being vain, expedient and popular.   It’s about sticking it to the other guy, even though the people elected this House of Representatives as well.  What it isn’t about is reasoned leadership required in this time of crisis.

One message of the tax rate battle is, if you are single and thinking about getting married –maybe you shouldn’t because the government penalizes marriage.  Think about it, single making $200,000 could be subject to a tax rate increase, but married?  Well it’s only $250,000.  Taxes should be an individual liability and a “family” should not be a taxable entity.  We should equally value individual effort.

As a brief aside, the policy flows from community property laws in individual states that encouraged married couples to file individual tax returns (splitting the income) to limit tax liability.  Congress adopted a change that allowed all married couple to essentially split incomes (a rule adopted when most women did not work outside the home).  The initial result was a drop in rates for married couples.   In fact, this situation actually discouraged women from entering the workforce and was, of course, unfair to single filers.    As Congress tried to address this to establish fairness, more and more women began to enter the workforce, and thus married couples began to face the marriage penalty tax.  Common sense suggests it is an artifact and should be done away with.

Let me put this in some sort of context.  It’s more than conceivable that you could have two civil servants (say Assistant US Attorneys), who work in a high cost of living area, so their salaries bust the $250,000 level – after all even the federal pay scale recognizes cost of living issues and pays locality allowances based on area (see http://www.opm.gov/oca/12tables/pdf/saltbl.pdf).  They are not rich.  They are raising kids, saving for college, paying a mortgage, and probably still paying off student loans.  They have need for a bigger house, so their mortgage eats up more of their paycheck than the comparable single person.  They are altruistic, believing in serving the public good and so they are not making the money they could make in the private sector.  Maybe they are also military reservists, and this additional income really pushes them over the limit.  Do we really believe these folks are the top 2% and somehow are sucking the life out of the rest of the nation?  Why is nothing at least tied to cost of living?  Wouldn’t that actually be the fair and progressive thing to do?

Not so long ago, Mr. President, you said reducing deductions could raise as much as $1.2 trillion dollars.  So why abandon this for a rate increase that will probably never bring in the revenue you need?  Why not be serious about these issues?  You once ran as a transformative politician and the only transformation I have seen is you into a petty, narrow, and somewhat mean-spirited competitor.  This is governing Mr. President; it isn’t a game of basketball.

It’s simple math that most households understand:  Money in should exceed (or at least be equal to) money out.  If a citizen is consistently charging $10,000 a month to a charge card (and only paying the minimum due), the fact that he suddenly reduces the excessive charging to $7500 doesn’t mean he is saving $2500 a month.  He is still going into debt.  He cannot turn around and say let’s invest that $2500 in something else because it doesn’t exist.  It is just debt, red ink, and the quick trip down the bankruptcy expressway.  Whatever peace dividend there is from our overseas drawdown is not money that suddenly exists to be spent Mr. President, it’s just less money we are borrowing.

We all understand this is a very complicated issue and the math is really, really tough.  We can blame the war expenditures for the deficit, except that the truth is the numbers indicate, Mr. President, your spending has exacerbated the problem.  Don’t forget about the $700 billion stimulus that didn’t work – you cannot blame that one on President Bush.  But surely we don’t then include that number into a baseline moving forward do we?

So what to do?  Well governing is always about finding the middle ground and making sure no one is completely happy (it’s called compromise not conquest).  Increase revenue through capping deductions is a good first start.  Then reform the entire bloated, 70,000-page code.  But an increase in revenue is only part of the solution.  You have to cut Mr. President.  Yes, you can probably find more efficiencies within the Department of Defense, but you have to look everywhere.  Entitlements have to be reduced.  Means testing makes sense.    Raise the retirement age– we are living longer than we did 30 years ago so this also only makes sense.  Maybe we should re-baseline by going back to 2003 spending levels as an appropriate baseline – before the full war costs were exploding the deficit.  But, a solution that calls for raising $4 dollars in taxes for every dollar cut, and then tries to sneak in additional stimulus spending isn’t a serious proposal, Mr. President.  It was the equivalent of a clown squirting water from his fake lapel flower into the eye of an unsuspecting circus attendee.  The clown gets a good laugh but the other guy?  He just gets wet.

Mr. President, the most important lesson in leadership I learned was as a kid in my older sister’s office.  She had a desk plate than put it this way:  Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.  Which is it to be?

Immigration Reform: Cheating Versus Hard Work, an American Dilemma

To address immigration reform we will have to address to competing American traits.  First Americans hate cheaters.  We don’t like it in our sports or in our politics, or even when standing in line (am I the only one whose blood pressure shoots up when people cut in line?).  We believe that the playing field should be level for everyone.  So when someone comes here illegally they have cheated.  They didn’t stand in line like they were supposed to.  They shouldn’t get any additional advantage because they cheated their way into this country.

But, Americans are a compassionate people who respect and reward hard work.  We don’t like seeing children suffer for the sins of their parents.  We don’t like seeing folks who are working hard driven under.  We secretly understand and appreciate why people risk everything to come here.

So what to do?

Maybe we should start with what not to do – no one in their right mind believes we are going to deport 11-12 million folks who are here illegally.   Anyone who believes deportation is a legitimate option cannot see the forest for the trees:  the costs would be astronomical in terms of housing people while they received deportation hearings, providing them legitimate counsel to assure due process, hiring enough immigration magistrates/administrative judges to hear these case, transportation costs back to their home of record etc, etc, etc. So if we take deportation off the table, what should we do that doesn’t reward cheating but doesn’t punish children or hard work?

Here are my thoughts:

1. If you came as an adult and you have a criminal record, you get a ticket home.
2. If you came as a child (for the sake of argument lets say less than 18 years old) and you have a criminal record, you get a ticket home unless the offenses were juvenile matters only and you haven’t run afoul of the law since the age of 18.
3. If you came as an adult, you do not get a pathway to citizenship but you do get a pathway to residency with the ability to work.  If you want to gain citizenship you need to go home and get in line.
4. If you came as a child you get a pathway to citizenship because you didn’t have a choice on whether or not to come.  But that path requires (1) military service; or (2) a college degree; or (3) a trade certification (i.e. passing a State’s electrician’s exam).  Once you meet these requirements then you can begin the path to citizenship if you so choose.
5. The pathway to permanent residency or citizenship must involve a criminal check that the applicant pays for and the applicant must pay a fine for violating existing immigration laws.  The system to move people into a legitimate status should be self-funded.  Further, applicants will need to be able to identify a corporation, business, or individual who is willing to serve as a pathway sponsor.
6. We need to modernize our existing immigration laws so that we are more flexible in allowing people to come in to work (guest worker visas) to actively encourage legal immigration.  We need to encourage foreign students who come to study in our universities to stay – if they did well that is.  No need rewarding mediocrity, we have plenty of native-born students who can fill that quota.  Further, we need to examine how any national quota system is reflective of the demographics of those who wish to come here legally.

There is no doubt that undocumented workers fill a gap in our economy.  Those for whom a job choice doesn’t exist often take the grimiest, lowest, most difficult jobs.  In the agricultural fields, construction, unskilled manufacturing, and the lowest levels of the service industry, undocumented workers go to work everyday, they do their jobs and their employers profit as a result (and our produce gets picked, our houses remodeled, and our hotel beds made).  In many respects they are model citizens.   Yes, they cheated but many people gained from their cheat.  I think it’s time for us stop bellowing about the borders.  It is time for us to work towards solutions.

If all you have is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail.  This problem is far more complex than merely strengthening our borders.  Is border control necessary?  Of course it is but it’s necessary from a national security standpoint.  Building a better mousetrap of border controls will only cause folks to be cleverer in how they cross, but it will not stop people from trying to get in.  Recall that a wall in Berlin did not stop people from trying to reach a better place to make a better life for their families.  I am often reminded of the iconic Princess Lea quote:  The tighter you close your fist the more they will slip through your fingers (not that this wisdom ended up helping Alderon).

Building a more muscular border presence does not address the real issue of undocumented workers in the United States.  Border security is an easy thing to focus on because it doesn’t force us to address the competing pieces of the American psyche:  we don’t reward cheaters and we don’t punish hard work.  Surely somewhere between these opposing ideas we can find common sense and common ground?

 

A Veteran’s Thanks

We live in a fundamentally decent nation.  When tragedies occur we throw in – either with good deeds or with money – but we throw in all the same.  Yesterday, that decency was on display again.  On Facebook, at football games, in parades, the nation showed its thanks to her Veterans.  

A couple of years ago I was flying out of Baltimore to Detroit for reserve duty.  Lounging around the Southwest Gates I noticed a crowd gathering and what looked like a reception area with balloons.  So, like many others, I stopped to see what was going on.  The plane just beginning to de-board was one of Southwest’s “Freedom Flights”.  These flights are full of World War II veterans coming to the area to visit their memorial.  As these veterans walked off the plane, some tall and fit and others pushed in wheelchairs, the crowd began to cheer.  It was spontaneous – there was no organized efforts to applaud, it just happened.  As we clapped and said our thank yous many in the crowd, and many coming off the plane, were moved to tears.  A simple, honest outpouring of thanks is a powerful statement.  I was glad I stopped that day, and not ashamed to say I was in tears when I finally walked away.

Once I was with a group of other Naval officers.  We were visiting Capitol Hill in our Whites (a completely impractical uniform but it does stand out).  As we walked into the visitors rotunda we turned to head to the group entrance on the other side.  As we crossed the rotunda we heard applause start on one side, and then the other.  We looked around to see who had entered, who had been the reason for the applause when we realized it was for us.  A completely humbling experience because none of us felt we deserved it.  The thanks really are owed to the young men and women who fight the good fight in horrible conditions under the most extreme pressure.   An embarrassing, and uplifting experience that underscored the fundamental decency of the American public.

Churchill was right: We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.  From all of the veterans I know, thank you America for being so kind and for giving so much.  It is our honor to serve you. 

The “Twitterization” of Political Discourse

Thanks to Michelle for identifying this issue.

140 characters has become the new political tome.  140 characters.  Just how long is that?  Well take for example the Declaration of Independence if limited to the first 140 characters:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with anoth”

Yep – take that King George!

Or the Gettysburg Address (not known as a long-winded speech):

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are create”

Moving, isn’t it?

I cannot form a complete thought in 140 characters, and yet this is the level to which serious political discourse has descended.  Here is a sample of soaring rhetoric on Twitter:

Barack Obama ‏@BarackObama

Under President Obama, we’ve accomplished a lot—and tomorrow’s our chance to finish what we started:

Seriously?  But not to be out done note the following:

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump

This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!

Equal opportunity knuckle-headedry.  Twitter is to reasonable discourse what yellow post it notes are to serious literature.  Twitter has out-sound bit sound bites.  Tweets are now headline news and twitter feuds are the new blood sport.  Celebrities tweet their deepest, innermost thoughts (often in less than 140 characters – just sayin) and folks swoon.  “Aren’t they clever”, their followers think.  “Aren’t I plugged in” because I now know what Beyoncee thinks about the almost 50% of the country that voted for the other guy. (BTW – I am thinking of getting shirts made that say “Proud Member of the Mitches”)  Twitter is fun, it’s great to share links, remind folks to watch a news station, let me know who the Yankees are trading.  But if we are relying on twitter as a serious communications medium for serious discussions on real problems well . . . Yikes!

The US Tax Code runs in excess of 70,000 pages.  It needs an overhaul.  It is unfair in many respects.  It is 70,000 pages of special give-aways and punitive taxes on hard working Americans.  Tax reform is a serious issue that requires analysis, discourse and reasoned judgment.  This is not an issue we can fully address in 140 characters, but I promise you commentators will put their 140-character spin on it.  Here’s hoping those working on tax reform are technical luddites focused on text not texting.

In the service when people start to freak out we call it “going high warble”.    I just looked it up.  Warble is a synonym for twitter:  a series of short, high-pitched calls or sounds.  Ever held a deep conversation with a bird?

Cue the Madness

The recriminations are starting to fly.  The fault is Romney’s because he was a weak candidate.  No, wait, it’s that left-leaning, in-the-tank-for-Obama main stream media that is genetically incapable of uttering any truth about a conservative candidate.   It’s Bain.  It’s bad advertising.  It’s the lies they told.  It’s the takers.  It’s anything but us.  The problem with circling a firing squad is you tend to kill everyone.  So, let’s take a deep breath and start being honest and listening to some hard truths.

At the very basic level, the President won because he got more votes.  Now, I know that sounds like something right out of the Department of the Obvious Department.  But if we are going to learn the lessons of this campaign (as opposed to merely observe the lessons of the campaign) then we have to start with this basic fact.   The question becomes how did he do it?  His ground organization was superior   His micro-targeting efforts and on-line presence were really good.  He won despite getting 10 million fewer votes than he got in 2008.  He got exactly what he needed, where he needed it to get past the goal line first.

You cannot lose a key demographic by almost 50 points and expect to win an election.  The Latino vote was about 10% of the overall vote.  71% went to the President.  Do the math.  If Romney had equaled Bush’s 40% it would have represented roughly (no-one told me there would be math on this test) a 4 million vote swing, but more importantly swings in some very critical states.  Note to self:  It is bad policy and bad politics to tell the fastest growing demographic in the nation to pack sand –  particularly when that demographic consists of socially conservative,  regular church going folks (a group Romney did very well with outside the Latino community).  Stop addressing immigration  as if it’s a pandemic where we need to quarantine folks.  Start recognizing the human impact of policies and start working towards real solutions.  While it pains me to say Gov. Perry was correct, he was when he pointed out the obvious:  If you build a 9 foot fence, 10 foot ladders become very popular.  Republicans have always led on the great issues that impacted people:  Slavery, Civil Rights (Jim Crow was a Democratic invention), Communist oppression and the list goes on.  Immigration reform should be about catching that lightening-in-a-bottle of human spirit to help grow our economy and strengthen the fabric of our nation   Not through amnesty, but through legislative immigration reform that speeds up opportunity for those willing to play by the rules.

This isn’t 1980 anymore.   Reagan is an icon, a once-in-a-lifetime transformational leader, heavy emphasis on the once-in-a-lifetime.  Anyone, strike that, everyone who tries to capture the mantle of Reagan is going to come up wanting.  You aren’t him and we all know that.  So stop it.  I want a leader for today, not someone parading around in a mask trying to bring back the 80’s magic (unless you are willing to wear the bad hair and your own set of parachute pants, in which case at least you have got guts).

We can be the party that seeks to blame anyone, everyone, anything for this loss,  or we can be magnanimous and say the President won.  In the end, isn’t the blame really ours because we failed to turn out to vote?  We didn’t talk to our neighbors and our friends in measured and reasoned ways to convince them to come out and vote.  3 million folks who voted for John McCain chose not to vote for Mitt Romney either because they chose not to vote or they voted for someone else (recall 10 million made the same call on the President).  In doing so, they chose the status quo.

Mitt Romney was never the caricature he was made out to be.  He is a good, honest, decent man who put himself and his family through a gut-wrenching and thankless process because he loves America.  You can circle the wagons if you want, but stop with the firing squad.  Any person who steps into the ring deserves better.  Parties lose elections,  but let’s not lose our perspective because we lost this one.  Let’s learn and grow.   After all 4 years really isn’t that far away.  In leap years it’s just 1 year.   Cue the madness.

I Believe

My candidate lost last night. But the sun still came up this morning. People still went to work. The world did not end. The thing about elections is someone loses and someone wins and then life goes on. In our uniquely American way we tend to internalize our politics and view our elections through a hyper competitive lens – as if every one of us is running for office. That makes defeat hard. It makes it personal. It does not make it tragic.

This election’s meaning, if there is one that can be gleaned, is while we remain a divided nation we are essentially comfortable with stasis. No individual or party can claim a mandate because the only clear winner was democracy. Our American democracy is messy, it can be unfulfilling, and it can look like a child’s finger-painting in its confusion. But it is ours. It is conducted not under the boot of a totalitarian regime, or in the huddled, muffled whispered tones of those who fear retribution from disagreement. Our American democracy is loud, bright and vibrant – even when it doesn’t turn out how we might want it to turn out individually.

We are a nation split down the middle, but not torn asunder. We, you and I, now have a choice to make. Do we yell at each other about the error of our collective ways, each believing in the singular correctness of our cause? Or do we take a deep breath; recognize there is more that brings us together than separates us and work to find those areas on which we can move forward? Do we continue to paint each other as caricatures? Or do we recognize that no person, and indeed no party or political movement, is totally homogeneous?

So let me start. I am a pro-life Republican who supports civil unions, believes the government should stay out of the bedroom, the boardroom and the sanctuary, get off the backs of the populace, and stick to what it does best (which is really precious little). I believe the tax code picks winners and losers and the rest of us pay the price. I believe there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell we can tax our way out of this fiscal mess, but that we have to cut spending and that means EVERYONE is going to have to give up a sacred cow.

I believe the biggest social issue we face is long-term financial stability. I believe our immigration problem starts not with unsecured borders (that is a safety/national security issue), but with our pathetic policies on legal immigration. I believe if you came here illegally, you don’t get to go to the head of the legal immigration line. But I believe a permanent segment of our economy is so dependent on immigrant labor that we would destroy it by removing the undocumented workers who sustain it.

I believe that any man, or woman for that matter, who believes a woman should vote a certain way merely because of gender is as paternalistic and sexist as the one who believes women shouldn’t vote (Read – no-one should ever say “How could any woman vote for that guy”). My gender may inform my choices, but I do have a mind of my own and being a conservative woman doesn’t mean it’s addled – it just means I have an individual point of view.

I believe the smallness of politics that descends to name calling, too-cute-by-half gotcha pictures, social media meanness and viral videos belittles us and prevents an open, honest discussion of ideas. I believe personal animus in politics is poisonous to the process.

I believe in the inherent goodness of America. I believe in her promise and her energy. I believe in her ability to rise above and to lead. I believe in our future. I believe.

My candidate lost last night. But the sun still came up this morning. People still went to work. The world did not end. And America? She still stands taller and brighter than any other place on this planet.