The Silent Majority

What America needs is a great Moderate leader to come out of nowhere. This person needs to be erudite, well-read, versed in politics in some fashion, and charismatic. He or she needs to have salient facts and a winning disposition and a virtually unassailable background. And, best of all, this person should be a third-party candidate.

People laughed when Jesse "The Body" Ventura ran for governor of Minnesota. They laughed until he won, and then got reelected. What was fabulous about Ventura as a governor was that a) he came out of left field, b) although he was best known as a wrestler and sometimes movie star, no one could find much dirt on him, and c) he was neither Republican nor Democrat. He had new ideas and he completely turned around Minnesota's situation and got it going forward again.

That's what America needs.

America was never intended to be a two-party country. Amendments to the Constitution have made it two-party and strengthened those parties to the point where they have a near stranglehold on politics in America. However, for the vast majority of people I know, and I have a sneaking suspicion the vast majority of Americans in general, one party does not speak for any one voter 100% of the time. Instead, everyone most likely has certain topics that they are conservative on, some they fall on the more liberal side, a few they are more noticeably "Democrat," and some on which they are "Republican."

For example, I'm anti-abortion, but I'm also pro-choice. By that I mean that I, personally, am against abortion except in very specific circumstances. There are too many options available to both men and women to stop unwanted pregnancies from occurring to have abortion as a last resort. However, I also recognize and understand that others do not share my opinion. And they have a right to this surgical procedure and to have it be the safest procedure possible. So, where do I fit on the "right/left wing" scale holding these seemingly opposed ideas?

The list goes on: I'm very right-wing on crime but sway left-wing on the environment. I'm republican in my ideas on the economy in general, but have decided democratic ideas about certain areas of the marketplace.

And I think most people follow a similar pattern to that-- swinging with their conscience, beliefs, and how they were raised between ideals that are typically one party to ideals that are typically the other. In the end, I think that makes us all sort of land in the middle as moderates, and I think most people can find common ground if they sit down and talk about it.

However, in the last decade or so, American politics have become increasingly polarized toward the extremes within the two main parties. These extremes are swaying the overall vote in ways that the silent majority of people don't like and do not want. There is a great line from the movie The American President, "People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand." Right now, I think we're in that state.

Obama was going to be the President of Change. He kept saying we can't keep doing politics as usual. Yet, even though his door has been open to the Republicans for his entire time in office, the leaders on the other side have railroaded him, lied to the American people, and sandbagged the changes he promised. On the other hand, Obama also didn't provide good, strong leadership to his own people; he let people like Nancy Pelosi run amuck, make bad laws, and put down the Republicans such that they didn't want to work with her or any other Democrats. So, Obama is not that person, or has failed to be the person who can make both sides work together.

And that's where my contention that a third-party candidate needs to come forward. Someone who is beholden to neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. Someone who is savvy and charismatic enough to make them actually work together on things, find the common ground, and stop hurting the Republic and start helping the Republic's people. Someone who can hold the same disparate beliefs I'm convinced the majority of people hold, who can argue for both sides of an issue and make people see the reasonable middle ground, and who can build bridges between those moderate voices and show the extremes for what they are-- a small but very vocal minority that does NOT have America's best interests at heart.

If a third-party candidate cannot do this, then we need to find a new Reagan or Clinton. Many people forget that both Reagan (Republican) and Clinton (Democrat) had Congresses that were held by the opposite party during their terms. Yet they still managed to get a majority of their policies enacted with a minimum of issue by building bridges between the parties and by doing things that the other side couldn't fault. (Yes, I know: Iran-Contra and Blow Jobs from Interns -- I'm talking strictly party and lawmaking.)

America has a number of issues that can, and will, sink it in the near future unless the people rally. These issues include: distribution of wealth (America was made great by having a strong middle class, but that middle class is disappearing rapidly as more jobs go overseas), infrastructure (the roads, railways, bridges, water, sewer, and other infrastructure across the country is failing at an alarming rate), education (America is coming in last or near last in nearly every qualifier for industrial nations), and production (America is not producing as much as it once was, and is shipping what production is left overseas-- allowing those nations to become strong with a strong middle class and further hurting the American economy and other issues).

We need a leader who is going to create jobs at a good wage getting people to work on the failing infrastructure. This solves two problems (distribution of wealth and infrastructure) by putting Americans to work fixing America. Next, that leader needs to revamp the educational system; it needs punishment for disobedient children, it needs to focus public educated on making the best, most well-rounded students for graduation from High School, it needs to build more schools and better stock all schools with new textbooks and equipment, and it needs to make teaching a career choice that more people want to do so we can lower class sizes and allow the students to actually learn.

Lastly, this leader needs to encourage car, clothing, electronic, widget, and doodad manufacturers to make those products in America. This puts even more people to work and further stabilizes the economy. If people make it in America and buy it in America, then America's economy stays strong. And, yes, it really IS that SIMPLE.

I hope this mythical leader comes along soon. The country cannot go another decade with this kind of infighting, rancor, and apathy about doing what it needs to before it starts to collapse under its own weight.