Festivus: We're Back With an Axe to Grind
Dearest Reader,
As some of you may have noticed, while most of you have been blissfully ignorant, your favorite porcupine themed conservative blog has not posted in some time. Mortgages had to be paid, children had to be raised, and speaking for myself, there were fish in the streams and rivers around our nation’s capital that needed to be caught. This is not to say that John Dos Passos Dos and I don’t enjoy writing articles to lay out ‘the way we see it’ or, at times, to badger and ridicule one another through snarky and snide slights buried within an otherwise valid piece of opinion writing.
The goal of the PT was to bring a NeoCon and an anarchi…err…Libertarian together to lament about the lost soul of our beloved party by circumstance. As writers and editors we have lost sight of this. In a temporary moment where I found myself both nostalgic and sentimental, and after one too many glasses of Blanton’s, I let John convince me that the PT was worth reviving. That as writers and as men, we still had something to say.
Finding ourselves in a new year, just over a month out from December 23rd (better known as Festivus), I’m going to take a moment to channel my inner Frank Costanza and air my grievances:
The impeachment is neither important nor interesting.
Our friends on the left thought they had Donald Trump with the Mueller investigation. When the Mueller Report was released, it was a dud. Some things happened that were questionable, but all in all, nothing of substance to prosecute. Instead of calling it a day and focusing on actually finding a candidate who could take on President Trump in 2020, the Dems doubled down. They brought forth impeachment hearings on some of the shakiest grounds imaginable (even by Swamp standards).
This just solidifies that the Democratic Caucus is terribly outmatched when it comes to procedure. Sure they impeached the president, but what did they gain? In the weeks after the impeachment the reds got redder and the blues bluer. That just doesn’t win national elections. So realizing the dud they had on their hands, Nancy ‘The Clapper’ Pelosi decides that she is going to hold on to the articles of impeachment and delay their arrival to the upper chamber. Why? According to Pelosi, it’s because the Senate was unwilling to allow for witnesses. In reality, it’s because she realized that Mitch McConnell is a master of procedural rules in the Senate and would scoot this whole matter along to a quick acquittal.
After weeks of holding out Pelosi did what Democrats do best. She folded. The House held a vote and the articles of impeachment have been delivered. The whole matter is a monumental waste of time. Trump will be acquitted. He will campaign on how the Dems did their best, but once again, no one can put Donny in a corner.
To be clear, Trump is not a paragon of morality. We should not raise our children to use him as a compass for how to navigate life. His election and subsequent administration has been mired by controversy after controversy, many started by the man’s own twitter account. But what I’m getting at is that numerous presidents have committed impeachable offenses, their poll numbers were either high enough to avoid the matter or the lower chamber didn’t have the prerogative to initiate impeachment hearings. The new Left’s beloved former leader Droney McPeaceprize (known by some as Barrack Obama) is among that list. Did he get congressional authorization for every use of force? Would his administration’s bumbling and obfuscation after the failed ATF plot ‘Fast and Furious’ not have qualified under the articles that Trump is being impeached? You may feel differently about the matter, but I see many similarities.
My opinion is that we should just get rid of impeachments. It is an aspect of the constitution that has aged poorly. When written, term limits did not exist. Thanks to the public being sick of Franklin ‘Scoot After Any Skirt in the Room’ Roosevelt and his four terms as president, the congress ratified the 22nd amendment. Additionally, the impeachment proceedings are not about ‘protecting the Republic’ they are almost entirely politically motivated. Gerald Ford was at least being honest when, as leader of the House Republican Conference, he argued that high crimes and misdemeanors might as well be whatever a majority of the House of Representatives defined it to be, and would vote for.
The whole process if flawed, the House of Representatives have proven to be ineffectual investigators ignoring or valuing certain evidence over others based on who is sitting in the Speaker’s chair. Let the people decide who serves as the head of state. And if we make a mistake…so be it.Stop blaming the Bureaucracy. It all starts in Congress.
Since the Carter administration, bureaucrats have become the de facto target of all “right wingers.” We say that are “lazy” or “unskilled.” Does the federal bureaucracy tend to vote for democrats? Yes. Do I blame them? No. When Woodrow ‘Just Make Me King Already’ Wilson was still a lowly academic at Bryn Mawr College, he wrote an essay, “The Study of Administration” wherein he laid out what would become a foundational treatise of what has become the field of public administration. He posited that the political administration and the bureaucratic administration should be wholly separated so as to ensure that the bureaucracy and uphold the fleeting political sentiments. To some, this is ‘classic King Wilson’, but he wasn’t advocating for the replacement of a citizen centric/rule by the governed system (at least not at that point). He believed that the bureaucracy needed to be manned by highly specialized individuals and function as a professional cadre with no allegiance to politics. Unfortunately both for the country and the bureaucracy, Wilson did not continue to hold these sentiments when he took office. He re-segregated the civil service and did everything in his power to bend government to his will.
For my entire professional career I have worked in, with, and around the bureaucracy at every level of government. Many times drawing a salary funded by you, dear reader, as Joe Taxpayer. From early in my childhood I felt what, as a practicing and devout Catholic, I can only describe as a calling to an avocation which served the people and not simply the bottom line. In my time in the bureaucracy I can attest that parts of Wilson’s dream is still alive and well, I have had the pleasure of working with some incredibly hard working, intelligent (sometimes even brilliant), and wholly committed bureaucrats who care about their role and the work they produce and the people they impact.
I will concede that the bureaucracy is too large and does need to be reigned in. But the culprit is not the bureaucracy itself or the bureaucrats manning their posts. The real target of our frustration is our own elected officials in Congress. As we all know, it is Congress that wields the power of the purse. Every added agency, program, and hire is a direct result of a policy which has been passed by those chosen to represent the people. If there is one aspect of the current administration that I find myself continually impressed by, it is the willingness to trim some of the most burdensome regulations imposed by the previous administration, and more importantly oppose new regulations. This is one promise President Trump has delivered upon.
In a June 2019 interim report, released by the Council of Economic Advisors, noted that the Trump administration has undertaken twenty federal deregulatory actions which would save American consumers and businesses a whopping $220 billion per year once they go into full effect. This action would raise real incomes by 1.3%.
The issue is that it has become all too easy to blame the faceless bureaucracy, the men and women in the gray flannel suits who clock in every morning and fulfill the statutory requirements of the laws passed by our legislature. What many fail to come to terms with is that as conservatives we tend to write off demographics as “unwinnable”. Inner-city? Unwinnable. Youth vote? Unwinnable. Government employees? Unwinnable. We need to not only extend the olive branch (not stopping the constant attack) and start recruiting, and dare I say it, forcibly taking over. We should encourage our youth to serve our nation’s civil service. The best and brightest can serve their nation by taking their principled approach to government and holding a seat at the table when it comes to designing the application and administration of the policy.A New Party of Ideas…Maybe Even a Compromise
I have never understood the self-righteousness and pride of our elected officials for their record of voting ‘no’. There are entire congressional careers which have been filled with the ‘no’ vote with very few original ideas coming out of their respective office. We must stop deifying the hard liners and recognize that their stances will net few returns for our causes. Numerous members who share our distaste for a government run healthcare system have voted ‘no’ (as they should have, it is a very bad idea), but the GOP’s answer/alternative has been lacking. We can’t hope to win the hearts and minds of the coveted middle 50% of America without bringing something of value to the table. The party that fails to innovate has little hope of surviving. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather the GOP didn’t go the way of the Whigs.
I see only one alternative to rectify our current course. Our legislature must actually do its job the way the founders intended. There is a reason why the House and Senate are set up in Article I; they are the big show. They were supposed to be the bold who guided our nation through well thought out policy which was poignant for the times (a representative only has two years to get things done before facing reelection) and responsible (a senator enjoys six years of comfort before being made to account for their sins…er…actions). Our elected representatives must, in no uncertain terms, craft policy. Not just any policy, but passable policy that can make it through committee and onto the floor. Then they must put in the same effort to build consensus not only within the GOP, but across the aisle. If we stop being the party of opposition, we can be the party of inspiration. That is the goal, the gold standard, and the epitome of what it means to be a public servant.
