I just saw a Real Clear Politics poll. It shows that only 44.2% of us approve of the job performance of President Obama. Congress is far worse, satisfying only 15.7% of us. 29.3% of the respondents to this survey feel that the country is being taken in the right direction these days. If your boss felt this way about you, how long would you be employed? Wouldn't your boss fire you?
We the people are the bosses of these government employees. We hired them. Why? We have the opportunity to fire them on election day. Why do we re-elect people we hold in such low regard? We have the right to demand a change in their performance. Let's clean house.
About two thirds of Americans want the Unaffordable Care Act changed. These folks want the Congress we employ to get it fixed. I'm not interested in politics as usual. I don't want symbolic votes. I want results. We need to demand results from our employees. They should be given a performance appraisal often, just like we all get at work. How can we expect our employees to represent us in accord with our vision of the country, if we don't tell them what that vision is? Write them a letter or send an email or give them a call. Don't be shy. They do work for us.
You know, it would be pretty cool if the president created a vision statement for America. Then we could understand if that vision matches ours. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe they don't want us to know about their vision for America. Would we vote for a presidential candidate that had a vision of America as the first communist country to "get it right?"
What about the various areas of the federal government? I think each should have an individual vision of how they can support the president's vision for the country as a whole. What if the department of energy had a publicly available vision of how they should operate and what they want accomplish? How about the departments of education, labor, commerce, state, etc. etc. etc.?
I would love to have more substance when I'm selecting a candidate? What is my senator's vision of how congress will make America better? What tactics is he or she planning to use to drive America toward that vision? I want to know how they will get the results I want. They can talk about things I want all day long, but I get no satisfaction if my elected representatives can't figure out how to play the game of politics and get these things actually accomplished.
How will the "financials" look? Yes, how do they plan to finance their proposals? What are the benefits? Did they do any market research to find out what the customers think of the new services? (The customers would be us.) Do we still want the new services when we find out how much they will cost? Are we willing to use debt to finance the proposal? This deal of voting for lots of benefits that you can get rich people to pay for is leading our country to financial ruin. If everyone paid for all the government services equally, we could make much better judgement calls. Don't you do cost-benefit analysis every time you spend your own money, even if it isn't done consciously? If one grocery store chain offered you steak and lobster paid for by your rich neighbor who can afford it, where would you shop?
I think it would be great to have a government that was run like a successful business. But then it wouldn't be a MessAPolitico. Then I would need a new name for my blog!
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