Friends, Americans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears... and your pockets

Running for political office these days is a huge undertaking. Even in the realm of speech, it requires one to learn an almost entirely different dialect from that of daily speech. This is especially true when one needs to address the people of "this great nation of ours."

When politicians do refer to "my fellow Americans," they often do so in one of two ways: either as "the taxpayers," or as "the voters." Isn't it interesting that we, as the hoi polloi, are seen almost universally as a source of income and of job security by politicians, but almost never as "the citizens?"

It sometimes makes me wonder how they really see us...

Well, a happy new year to everyone. I found this article in the British paper, The Guardian. I thought it was somewhat interesting to get their perspective on the debacle that is the 2008 presidential elections.

"It's pretty astonishing, really - we're at the tail end of a failed presidency, and the people running to succeed it are promising to continue its failed policies.

Now, many observers would say, well, they're just pandering to their party's rightwing base, and once one of them secures the nomination, he will tack to the centre. Undoubtedly, he will, for tactical reasons. But the real question is how the next Republican will govern should he happen to win. And the answer to that question is that there's every reason to assume that he will be just as a conservative as Bush for one simple reason: the interest groups that run the GOP will not brook much deviation from the standard line."

That is hitting the nail on the head. Bush is a supporter of renewable energy, but the interest groups (and therefore the GOP) are not. So, he has been against it for the past seven years. No matter who runs, if they are elected they are going to be forced to govern a certain way.

Partisan politics are a wonderful thing, no?