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June 7, 2024 Editor, The News-Gazette: Well, here we are again in our quadrennial “silly season” where, and I don’t care which of the major parties you intend to vote for, we vote for the country’s most powerful official.
As has been the case for so many election cycles, we’re faced with a choice (realistically) of two equally hopeless presumptive candidates. We don’t seem to vote for the best person, but rather the one who is less of a jerk. The major parties continue to encourage this approach by spending millions of dollars, using any approach seen useful to them, telling us how bad the other candidate is perceived to be.
With an ever increasingly polarized Congress, we are being governed by feat, sorry, executive orders. Presidents can’t depend on Congress to do much but vote along strict party lines and worry about their own reelection. Executive orders can, and too often are, the worst possible way of enacting new laws and our only recourse is the Supreme Court, itself an increasingly “party line” body.
Paraphrasing, many notables have expressed the view, “We get the government we deserve.” If we want better, we must look to ourselves and demand better candidates. One very scary definition of politics I have discovered says, “Activities within an organization that are aimed at improving or decreasing someone’s status or position and are typically considered to be partisan, devious or divisive.”
Surely we’re better than that and can return to a time where we could discuss candidates without being destructive? Or am I naïve? JOHN MORMAN Lexington
