The Presidential Candidates

Politics at its core is compromise. No one can accomplish goals in a plural society if they are not willing to compromise. Compromise is a learned value that seems to come with age and experience, because only after trials and tribulations can the value of the support of your fellow man be learned. The framework of “The American Dream,’ although ripe with incentives over achieving monetary goals in a Capitalist socio-economic system, fails to teach the lesson of politics. Where is this learned? Is it learned in Poly-Sci 101 at the undergraduate collegiate level? Compromise is a core value crucial to the existence and maintaining of the human race, yet it is not learned in school. Where is it taught just like so many other core values crucial to maintaining a balance of ego versus compassion? It is taught through religion, an aesthetic that unnecessarily has been skewed through the pursuit of monetary power. One only has to watch a presidential candidate debate to realize that pursuit of monetary power seems to be the only force driving politics in the United States. Long gone is the philosophy of the founding fathers documented in our American Constitution. It, much like religion, has become but a unwieldy and cumbersome hindrance to the selfish pursuit of monetary power. The history of the United States is a confusing one laden with Godlike doctrine but also selfish hedonism. How could it be a clause like “All men are created equal” is included in our core philosophical documents when Southern plantation owners so easily bought and used slaves? So it seems the history of the United States is littered with hypocrisy. As can be expected this hypocrisy has never ceased, and never is it more evident than by watching media’s depiction of American life today. If politics truly is compromise, then how do presidential candidates plan to succeed in taming Washington DC, when they can’t exhibit compromise when running a presidential candidacy? The presidential race could and should be the precursor to what is going to occur in Washington once a new president is elected. Upon this premise should the decision be made for who is to be the next president of the United States. Much like a college job interview, the presidential election is a calculated openly visible test of how the future president will behave once elected. Standing in real time with each micro-second documented by media, isn’t the presidential race a valid test of a candidates future behavior? Could it be as in Nature vs. Nurture that one’s environment unfairly shapes a candidates behavior breaking under the inhuman conditions of the appetite of “immediate gratification” in America’s media? What is the better test of a candidate’s feasibility of success or failure in politics? Do we trust their track record of voting? It seems we can’t do that, because the majority of politicians waffle on the issues constantly changing their perspective and vote. Can we judge a candidate on his track record of success in government like Rudy Giuliani, a man guilty of prosecuting and taking out of power the Gambino family mafia? So quickly he was excised from the presidential race. Should we use bloodline as a determinate of one’s future behavior, as so easily characterized by nepotistic behavior? Contrary to the stout partisanship evidenced in American politics, compromise and compassion for one’s fellow man is a core value of life learned only through religion. Religion as a historical concept certainly is not represented by the Christian Right or Texas polygamist compounds or atheism or agnosticism. Religion could and should be best represented by the institutions they have been throughout history, and this history can only be learned by staying true to philosophies that have stood the test of time. We as Americans can not allow the selfish pursuit of monetary power the ability to reshape our written doctrines. Much pressure has been put upon our Supreme Court under the Bush administration squeezing the justices, much like the Attorneys General, into legislating in favor of monetary power. Philosophies such as religion have a place in American politics and governance because it is only here that core values are learned viable to human existence. If the pursuit of monetary power is allowed to skew our core philosophies and doctrines, then American is destined to fail to a coup d'etat. It is not possible to let the core values upon which a country was founded to be reshaped, or the country will fail. There is no humanly way possible an army of financial elites can overthrow the soul of a nation, and this message needs to be spread. As Americans of every financial class are continued to be manipulated into bankruptcy, they must realize that they are the “well-armed militia” that defeated Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. Only we as outraged and concerned Americans can force the pursuit of monetary power back into its selfish corner to pout like a spoiled child. Which candidate is capable of handling this task, and is that responsibility evident in their behavior on the campaign trail?