World-Herald Misses The Point Yet Again

The Omaha World-Herald, in its attempt to pass the blame for an incompetent class of entrenched lawmakers who have done nothing right and everything wrong, sought to blame everyone in Congress for the fact that nothing is getting done. Then, they sought to explain why people are so pissed off at Congress right now.

But they missed the point. Badly. Hell, they didn't even get within a mile of it.

By blaming both parties and both houses, and saying that nothing will change if the party control of Congress changes, the World-Herald again misses the point. They are right that this entire Congress has done little if anything to tackle the pressing issues of the day. They are even right in some respects that Democrats are to blame, too. But beyond that, things are just plain wrong.

People are pissed off for a variety of reasons, true, but one of the foremost among those isn't even mentioned in the OWH editorial: Iraq. The editorial makes a passing mention to the "war on terror," but the writer believes that issue isn't as pressing a concern, or as illustrative of the failures of this Congress, as immigration.

It's typical of a partisan paper like the Omaha World-Herald to focus on this issue, and it certainly is something that voters in Nebraska are focused on, but it's not the most pressing issue, and certainly isn't more indicative of the failures of this Congress as the corruption issue, or the out-of-control budget - which the editorial did mention.

So, why are people pissed off?

People are pissed off because this Congress has become a rubber stamp for President Bush.
People are pissed off because this Congress is the most corrupt Congress we've seen in a long time.
People are pissed off because their tax dollars are going to wasteful spending projects and Congressional pay raises.
People are pissed off because their representatives would rather pose for the cameras than get things done.
People are pissed off because any semblance of compromise has been destroyed. Any memory of leadership is long since gone. There is no room for independent thought, and no place for outside-the-box thinking.
People are pissed off because almost 3,000 American lives have been lost, and the only line of thinking coming from Washington is "stay the course."
People are pissed off because their leaders have lost touch. With their constituents. With their base. With reality.

But where the World-Herald completely misses the point... They buy into a self-defeating concept of democracy that leads us to a 98% incumbency rate for Congress. They say that all of Congress has done a terrible job, but the challengers couldn't possibly do much better, so we might as well stick with what we've got. This is harmful logic, though certainly not unexpected coming from a conservative newspaper. It's a common tactic of the guilty party to use one form or another of the "everyone does it" argument. You know the ones: "All politicians are liars and crooks," "Congress never does anything right, anyway," etc. The problem is that these fallacies protect the guilty at the expense of democracy. We never know if we could build a better Congress, because we accept at face value the claim that we can't. I believe we can, and I believe that democracy deserves a hell of a lot better than excuses and this lack of accountability. That's what these elections are all about: accountability.