All Of the 74,000 Job Gains in December Went to Women

The cafeteria in the building I work in has a TV in one corner-- one of the big kind hung from the ceiling. It's usually tuned to a news channel of some kind, CNN mostly. Anyway, today, Pres. Obama gave some kind of speech about how 2014 was going to be all about jobs. There was no sound coming from the TV (as there usually isn't), but people can read the captions on the bottom of the screen and obviously, see who is on it.

Four or fewer years ago, when Obama's face was on that TV screen, people stopped talking and eating, turned and watched, even though they couldn't hear what he was saying. They smiled. They were glad just to look at his visage.

Today? No one paid him the least bit of attention. They looked up at the TV, then immediately went back to eating/talking-- without a smile.

My what a difference three years makes, especially when you haven't done a single thing you promised you would. Close Gitmo: No. Post all bills on whitehouse.gov for public review and comment before signing them into law? No. Get U.S. troops out of the Middle East? No. And the biggie, the big whammy: Get comprehensive health care reform legislation passed and signed into law that allows Americans to keep their current health care providers, avoid paying more for health insurance and co-payments than currently, and all while not having a negative impact on job creation. No, no, and no.

Someone please refresh my memory: Have I left anything out? Be honest and utterly non-partisan. Can you actually remember a single thing Obama said he'd do once in office that he's done, and just as importantly, in the way he said he would? I can't. Not that the typical politician is any better, however. It's just that with this one, his entire platform was "I won't be like George Bush, I promise!", and further, he promised to un-do much of what GWB did, including roll back tax policies (at least those under his direct influence) that seemed to favor the wealthy. He hasn't done that, either. (Oops, missed that one out in my list above.)

It isn't nostalgia, it's comparative history that drives me to throw out the following names:

Then: Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill*, Eisenhower
Now: Carter, Bush (both), Clinton, Obama

[* Yes, I know Churchill was the PM of the UK during WWII and never a US president, but I include him as representative of a political leader back then who was actually *competent*, even as he was snockered 90% of the time. Loaded like a freight train on whiskey morning to night before, during, and after WWII, he *still* successfully coordinated the UK's substantial war effort with the Allies at beating the Germans in less time than it takes Apple to come up with a genuinely new product/version of the iPhone that isn't distinguished from its predecessor merely by having an improved built-in camera and sexier-sounding Siri voice.]

Does anyone else feel like we're headed down the other side of the hill, purely in terms of the competency of political leadership our country has? I do. Hope it gets better some time soon but the candidates seem to just get loopier and loopier as time goes on, and our "two-party system" keeps anyone with genuinely fresh ideas who isn't already bought and paid for from ever getting close to a high-enough office to do anything.

I do believe this story has been told before dozens of times in human history: Rome, Greece, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, and Imperial Britain, to name just a few. Oh, different details here and there, names, faces, ideologies all change, but the general idea is the same: stagnation and entrenched interests placed ahead of the good of anything else, leading to the kind of myopia and unwillingness to live the kinds of values and make the kinds of sacrifices that those "in charge" want others to live up to and do. The result is the same: eventually the body grows so weak on the inside it either collapses under its own weight like a massive, bloated star, or someone else just comes along and gives it a small push-- and down it goes.

But sometimes, these things take time. The Ottoman Empire was around for 6 centuries. Rome, for 12 centuries. America as an independent, united political state has only been around for about 230-240 years, depending on how you measure it. Rome and the Ottomans had their ups and downs but still lasted as long as they did. So we'll see. But personally, I'd feel a lot better in the present if we had some presidential candidates (or even would-be ones) that didn't strike me as unfit for any elected office more significant than "town dog-catcher".