Mature Leadership

Have you ever thought about the Power Brokers in Congress?  These are the people who:

•   Absolutely control the laws that do or do not get the light of day.
•   Hold America hostage to their personal agendas.
•   Hold the White House hostage to their personal agendas.
•   Put party politics ahead of the people.

Before you say this is just sour grapes because I do not like the people in those positions, you might be partially right.  However, like many things, it takes being hit in the head, to realize that ceiling rafter is a little too low.

Admittedly, I am troubled by the venal, petty actions of the current Speaker of the House and Senate Speaker.  I am troubled how they have played politics repeatedly without regard to the will of the people.  I also realize that this could just as easily be perpetrated by a couple of jackasses on the other side of the aisle if given a chance.  

It got me to wondering just why they were willing to be so petty.  I think I know just why.  It is because they do not have to answer for their actions.  Not really, anyway.  In fact, if I had a child that acted so petulant and petty I would definitely ground said child until s/he learned to be more mature.

Think about it.  If they were in a national office, they would have to answer to all of the people for what they did.  Not so in the case of a Senator, and definitely not the case of a Congressman.

Let us look at the current situation:

• Mitch McConnell – Senate Speaker – got approximately 807K votes in his 2014 senate election.
• Paul Ryan – Speaker of the House – got approximately 230K votes in his 2016 congressional election.

Think about it.  Arguably two of the three most powerful people in the United States government and neither of them not even getting a mandate from a million people, one not even one quarter of that. Not to be disparaging of either them but Kentucky or Wisconsin, their home states respectively, are what one would call the hotbed of intellectual or political leadership or creativity.

They have played fast and loose with long-standing Congressional rules and practices for purely political reasons.  I might add that these rules and practices were put into place specifically in order to try to separate petty political gamesmanship.  They did not fear those built-in warnings; they seemed to embrace the pettiness.

Can we do anything about this save removing them from office?  Probably not, the genie is out of the bottle.  The checks-and-balances that Congress put in place to curtail pettiness are gone.

We can only hope that those leaders that follow can show a level a maturity that is reflected by the level of maturity implied by the minimum age requirements for those obtaining those offices.