Choose Better

This morning, as soon as I woke up, I started thinking about politics, and about the economy. I think I had been dreaming about them.

On the way to the store this morning to pick up the Sunday paper, I was thinking about how we've come to expect that politicians are going to lie to us. We expect that there will be differences of honest opinion, yes, but we expect that they're going to flat-out lie, too. Its usually okay if its our side doing it, and its usually reprehensible and vile if the other side does it.

When I was leaving the store, I passed two old men who work there doing odd jobs -- bagging, retrieving carts, and so forth. One was saying to the other 'Well, when I was laid off, they were laying off a whole bunch of people..."

At home, I thought that I haven't been doing much reading lately, so I picked up the copy of Bob Schieffer's America that I'd gotten from the library, and read about the Clinton push to reform campaign financing - but they wouldn't unilaterally do the right thing; they said they'd do it only if the other side did. I felt a little glow of pleasure about Obama's saying that the Democrats would not take lobbyist funds, and then I thought that he's not perfect, either - just a little bit better. I thought of how hard that must have been, turning down money - and then I thought about how he turned down federal money, too, breaking his word in the process, and opening the door to getting staggering amounts from other sources. I tried not to think about how much of those staggering amounts really is from lobbyists, just cunningly rerouted, and instead thought about how one person doing the right thing -- even if its not that right, compared to the way it ought to be -- can make a difference.

I wondered if we will turn over a country to our children who will look back at our time and think 'how simple it was, then'.

Incidentally, the book is pretty good.