Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.
Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.
We seldom hear anything from Barack Obama that we can agree with, primarily because anything he says we weigh against what he has actually done. But Tuesday (4-3-12) he said something we not only agree with, but think it was profound.
Real Clear Politics (is that an oxymoron or what?) reports that he said:
"This bears on your reporting," President Obama said to journalists. "I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing then they're equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And an equivalence is presented which I think reinforces peoples' cynicism about Washington in general. This is not one of those situations where there's an equivalency."
Now we realize that Obama was trying to school the press to report as he wants them to report him, but he did find an acorn in that comment.
We believe there are far too many people among us who want equivalence, particularly in politics. That is, among competing ideas they yearn for the "common ground." Many of them would call themselves "moderates." They like compromise.
The will also readily settle for mediocrity. Obama proves that.
My Mother, a truly remarkable woman in many ways, was that way. A family tradition when I was growing up was that my Daddy and I would debate current events or politics at the Sunday dinner table (dinner was the mid-day meal). We would sometimes argue a point, then switch positions and argue the opposite side. I learn more from my Daddy, who had only a high school education than I did in any of the courses I took at Duke or Carolina. I did so because it was a challenge and he often taught me the trap of waffling to achieve equivalency. He'd chop you off at the knees if you wavered.
Mother was always trying to get us to agree. She was obsessed with trying to achieve equivalency in our positions. That she considered success.
But Daddy taught me that if you believe something strongly there is no room for compromise. You stand on your principles and let the chips fall where they may. At a Sunday dinner debate that works. It may not work all the time in every situation, because there are times when we need to come to agreement with someone in order to make something work.
But I agree with Obama that when people see our government leaders waffle or backtrack on issues of principle they simply lose confidence in both sides. They becomes jaded, thinking that politicians will say anything they think they need to say, not what they really believe.
The corollary of this milquetoast results.
You can see this in the continuing namby-pamby approach to reducing the deficit in Washington and the "debate" between Beverly Perdue and the Republican Legislature over the sales tax/cutting education in North Carolina. What it results in is no real effective action to reduce spending and no real advancement of education or reducing the deficit. We just get a little less of everything and not much of anything.
The better approach it seems to us is for the representatives to stand on the principles that they ran on to get elected and then weight their votes against those principles on each item before them and cast their vote accordingly and let the chips fall where they may. Then they go home and explain their votes according to the principles they ran on and let the people decide whether to send them back to Raleigh or Washington again.
But what we actually have, ironically, is epitomized by none other than Barack Obama. Seldom does he speak that he does not equivocate. He constantly seems to be saying one thing and doing another. He says one thing to one group and something fundamentally different to another. Just look at the debate last summer on reducing the deficit--and what the result was.
What better example does one need than to read both paragraphs of his comments in the article linked above. In the first he says equivalency is not the appropriate position to take. Then in the next paragraph he talks about "centrist positions." How much more duplicitous can you get? So who among us does not understand what he's saying...and that is: Everybody ought to agree with me.
No that is not what we need. What we need are leaders to have principles, stand on those principles and then live or die politically according to their principles.
One more example. America has fought four wars in recent years without a Declaration of War. The Constitution is clear. Congress declares war, the President as Commander-in-Chief prosecutes the war. If Congress cannot muster the votes to pass a Declaration of War the President should have no authority to go on the offensive militarily. And when the vote is taken, if it is to declare war then and right then every single member of Congress should join the battle to win the war.
Walter B. Jones, Jr. is a perfect example of the fallacy of equivalency. He voted to send American troops into Iraq but then, before the job was finished he began to advocate (in such a way that the enemy could hear him) that we pull out. We would suggest to Rep. Jones that the principle here is: Don't fight if you don't intend to win. Being before something before you were against it guarantees that you are wrong. There simply are no two ways about it. The result of equivalency in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is the sacrifice of American lives for no ultimate purpose.
As of today, April 4, 2012, there are 216 days before election day. We would urge every eligible voter to examine the candidates against the principles you feel important and then vote for the one whose principles most closely match yours. Hold that candidate to acting in accord with those principles and then let the chips fall where they may.
