Hope Peddlers a Public Menace

It's that one common ground they all have while campaigning for our votes.  You are absolutely right Scott.  Hope is the energy we use to perform the tasks that will drive us to our dreams.  Without the proper tools and training however, hope becomes wasted energy. 

What I find hard to swallow every time an election year rolls around is the hypocrisy that screams from all political camps, namely in regards to bi-partisanship.  We have campaign ads shoved down our throats from every angle filled with ridicule and name calling of opponents, even in the same party, then a few months later these same people who've been slinging mud at each other make up, kissy, kissy, huggy, huggy on a national stage.  Even the Anointed One has dropped to this level of politics.  He's no better than the people he tries to vilify in this regard. 

It is all just more of the same this year, hope and name calling abound.  So far I see nothing different from either camp.  It's all just superficial.

Ronald Reagan was the epitome of positive thinking and he talked about the shining city on a hill. That was not "hope" but that offered "hope".

Hope as being promised by one candidate in the upcoming election, implies that there is a chance of success so we are holding on in anticipation.

That fits in nicely with "change", which remains undefined in this election and "Yes We Can" which translates into, 'say anything to stir emotions and win at any cost'.

Unfortunately, all of that translates into, rhetoric. I can not believe that seemingly intelligent people fall for the hype, but they do. (BTW-The New HYPE movie is out and everyone should see it).

To Scott's point here. "Hope" is a non-tangible. It does not require an end result and is so ambiguous that it could mean anything to anyone. I "hope" I will get a tax break or in the philosophy of the Messiah "Obambi", it means "hope" for "change". Because we are hoping for something that we are unsure of, it is total hype and nothing else.

What we need is accountability, not hope. We need a fix, not change for the sake of change. Most of all we do not need a radical agenda of change, we need to stay the course and correct the issues that have derailed the economy.

"Hope" is intangible as are the results that rhetoric like that would yield.

Another good one Scott!

Let's think back on 20th Century presidents who promised and delivered positive change:  Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

Theodore brought the government into social problems on the side of the underdog.  The best example is child labor laws.  An 8-year-old whose immigrant parents are penniless is not exercising his "freedom of contract" when he goes to work in a giant, unsafe mill.  He has no power, no choice, and no maturity to enter a contract freely.

Franklin's alphabet soup of government agencies pumped money into the hands of the unemployed until the economy started to recover on its own.  The final end to the Depression came when World War II put everybody to work.  Franklin was the first president to make the government an active player in the business cycle, to protect union members and others whose boats were swamped by the excesses of unrestrained capitalism.  There's no longer a question that we need Social Security, a 40-hour work week, and regulated financial institutions.  Since FDR, the argument has been over how best to administer them.

John Kennedy did not have time to leave a great legislative legacy, but he made the country feel young and vigorous again.  Lyndon Johnson used his unique legislative genius to enact most of Kennedy's agenda.  Not everything he did had a good outcome, but civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Headstart, and student loans are a pretty proud legacy.  Johnson and Kennedy will never outlive the legacy of the Vietnam war, which still polarizes the country 40 years later.

Despite his age, Ronald Reagan made the country feel vigorous and able to control its own destiny after losing a war and 10 years of a deteriorating economy.  The guiding principle of his success was, "Government is not the solution to the problem; government IS the problem."

He was right about that in 1980. Too much regulation, high taxes, interest rates, and inflation were keeping the country from generating the wealth it needed to pull itself out of its 10-year economic funk, which became national doubt about its ability to control its destiny.

This year, we're in economic danger again, and in need of change.  We have to end a war, and refocus on the war we should have been focused on from the start.  Russia is acting like its safe to become aggressive in the world.  Both presidential candidates claim they are the ones who can deliver real change.  I hope and pray the voters make the right choice.