Different Political Perspectives

For Mark Sanford, an affair is a career killer. For a Kennedy, it would be a resume enhancer. In France, an affair d'coeur is like breathing. Rare is the (male) politician in Europe that does not have a mistress. Why would we assume politicians would be any less corrupted than anyone else in our decayed society? The Sanford story, with a diappearance at first resembling Judge Crater but now proven to be more like Aimee Semple McPherson, is obscuring consequential issues that have greater impact on our futures than a governor's bedroom antics. I heard Republican US Representative Paul Davis from Wisconsin sum up Obama care better perhaps than anyone else today when he said any public plan by its nature will lead to a single payer socialized medicine system, because private insurers will be competing against "an opposing team who is also the referee". Government will stack the field, making the rules and crushing private insurers. Few are listening to or reporting Davis' salient message, too caught up in the titillation of Sanford to keep their eyes on the ball of blocking socialized medicine. I started to write a column today about bizarre assertions by John Kerry on the PBS News Hour about how prior to the Obama Cairo speech the US had only offered the Muslim world blame and belligerence, notwithstanding that in every US conflict since Panama, America had sought to protect with blood and treasure, not rhetoric which Obama offers, the lives and/or liberation of Muslims-in Somalia, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, with the liberation of Kuwait and protection of Saudi Arabia in the First Gulf War, in freeing Afghanistan from the Taliban and in overturning Saddam's Iraqi dictatorship. Lindsey Graham, the moderate Republican from the adulterer's state of South Carolina on the program made a half-hearted attempt to counter Kerry's baseless, Bush-bashing assertions, but largely failed as he let himself be bullied and cowed by the Massachusetts's Senator and the moderator. There will always be unfaithful husbands and wives; political discord is nothing new, but at least, the GOP can try to be strong in defending its record and stand with whatever principles Republicans have left. Does America deserve two debased political parties? Is this how Rome falls?