It is a bipartisan sentiment that the political class has shown willful neglect over issues like the national debt, health care, energy policy, illegal immigration, etc. Although perhaps for different reasons, no one is satisfied with the direction of the country on these issues. So, now more than ever, our elected officials need to be given continuous feedback on their performance. And since political events are choreographed for the benefit of the politicians, and never is heard a discouraging word, the only place for this to happen is when they crawl out from their bubbles of adulation and show their faces in public. Anytime a politician shows up at a public event, for the purpose of politicking, the American people need to start giving them the Bronx cheer. If they're not given a performance review in this setting, they may never get the message that they're efforts are substandard.
For example, check out the crowd reaction from this contrived public appearance for the purpose of politicking yesterday:
Rock star adulation, for the man most responsible for planning trillion dollar annual deficits for the next decade! While he's taking his bows for still not dealing with the problem. I'm not sure he got the message that The People aren't thrilled with his policy prescriptions.
I know many Democrats are thrilled with him, no matter what he does. ("I don't care, Obama is awesome".) But this was at the Lincoln Memorial, a place of patriotism and American exceptionalism, meaning conservatives were probably abundantly represented. What were they doing? Cheering along or just meekly standing by? Maybe they're taking their cues from how the GOP leadership behaves in budget negotiations.
And not just the President or Democrats are candidate for this kind of feedback. Name any of your powerful, careerist Washington leaders and they should get their fair share of the national piece of mind. I don't want to hear any obscenities or vulgarities or even garden variety crazy directed toward our public servants. And of course, absolutely no violence whatsoever. Just a little vocal dissent that is squarely in the American tradition of democracy and free speech would be nice. Nobody had a problem with that as recently as three years ago. It's time to hear it again.
