All wisdom comes from watching television. Tonight a viewer on a political panel show called in and posed the following question to the assembled pundits: “All three current presidential candidates are senators. All three claim to have tremendous leadership skills and ideas for improving the lives of all Americans. If they have such great ideas and leadership abilities, why haven’t any of them been able to lead their colleagues in the Senate to accomplish anything significant?”
He raises a good point. Obama, Clinton, and McCain are among the 150 or so most powerful Americans. They can literally rewrite all of the laws in this country. Yet it would be tough to find anyone who can say that they have enjoyed greater opportunities or a better life because of something that one of these three has done.
I don’t know, McCain has been pretty active as a Senator – the new campaign finance laws bear his name – and has done a number of things on behalf of his constituents previously. To say nothing of his service to all of us in Viet Nam.
Hillary hasn’t done much as a Senator except land a bunch of pork for New York (not a bad thing if you’re one of her constituents), but she did help Bill when he was President, which depending on your point of view counts or doesn’t.
It is true that Obama has done pretty much nothing at all except make speeches. Yet he is the “agent of change”.
Timely point. I was recently pointed to this article which takes the point a bit further. Even though it degrades to an overly generalized “throw all the bums out” tone, it does raise some questions as to the qualifications of all our elected officials.
http://catskillcommentator.com/2008/04/07/only-545-people/
Just a quick look in the Library of Congress ( http://thomas.loc.gov ) you can list the bills that are sponsored by any member of the House or Senate. Here’s the totals for each of the 3 candidates. (I don’t know if this includes bills that they are co-sponsors)
McCain – 37
Obama – 122
Clinton – 165
You’ll have to look through them to decide if most of these bill are fluff or have substance. How long has McCain been in the Senate?