by Richard Garibay
After watching President Obama’s fairly recent State of the Union Address and interview with Bill O’Reilly I found myself wondering why modern politics is so awful. There are those of you who will call me apathetic and simpleminded, but the fact is that most Americans have grown tired of Washington. This article won’t be an attack on the president or a liberal call to arms because, quite frankly, both parties are acting incompetently.
As far as Republican politicians are concerned, Obama has won the presidential election twice now and they need to accept it. They demanded to see his birth certificate, saw it, and some are still not satisfied. The whole fiasco was pathetic and helped absolutely no one. Rather than working tirelessly against the president, Republicans need to bite the bullet by working with him and wait their turn for the presidency. I understand if they don’t agree with some of his policies, but they seem to be so caught up in their blind hate for Obama as a person that they have forgotten the reason they were elected; to help the voters who put them in office, not end a president’s career.
As for the Democrats, every time they are confronted with the awful state of the economy and President Obama’s painfully slow recovery actions, they respond with something along the lines of, “We inherited it from George W. Bush and incompetent Republicans.” The Democrats are obsessed with pointing fingers. I’m honestly concerned more about who will work to fix the problem not the person the responsible for the mess.
Liberals are also obsessed with programs that have nothing to do with the main issue at hand. They are working to sell the Affordable Care Act to the American people but how will that fix the issue of the economy? More people could afford healthcare and it wouldn’t be a problem if there were jobs with medical plans.
Overall, it seems as though bipartisanism is considered something awful in Washington. So much could be achieved if both parties sat down and worked together, because what is politics if not negotiation.
There is also an ideology spreading in which most politicians feel they have more obligations to their political party rather than the people. We aren’t Democrats and Republicans, we’re Americans. We must swallow our pride and work together to solve our problems. In my opinion George Washington made this threat very clear when, in his presidential farewell speech, stated, “It [political party separation] serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms…”