Why Bash People Insteadof Policies?

[talon]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/05/obama.bush.election/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Everyone who stayed with me during the Bush era knows I was not a fan of Bush's policies and behaviors, nor was I very impressed with his constant me vs all y'all attitude he projected. Disliking his policies and his behavior was not reason to bash the man, just his policies and his method of distancing himself from his audience in his speeches.

I think it is perfectly legitimate to reference policies, whether they came from Bush, Reagan, Clinton, Carter, or any previous president when discussing America's current situation. We didn't get here in some isolated bubble. The past did create the present and will affect the future, and current policies have to be built based on what exists. We can't ignore that.

However, referencing what we have to work with is not the same as bashing those who were previously the policy-makers. Some of the policies are good and that is just as important to consider when working with building the future as bad policies are.

It defeats the purpose of dealing with bad policies if we can't separate the people who created them or allowed them to become active. Bashing the people obscures the underlying issues - the bad - or not necessarily bad, but failed - policies. I'm sure that some of the policies we've come to see as evil seemed the best possible choice at the time they were created (although there's no excuse for the USA PATRIOT Act except fear and panic).

So let's move beyond both the people who created the policies and the times in which they were created so we can revoke and clean up the bad stuff and replace it with stuff we hope will fix it.

Future presidents will look back at the things we do, that we think are perfectly reasonable and good and wonder what on earth we were thinking, just as we're looking back at previous presidential policies and shaking our heads over them.

Stop with the bashing already. Bush is irrelevant. He's not president any more.

His policies are still fair game, as are the policies of Carter, Reagan, Bush Prime, Clinton, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Arthur, Hayes, Taft, Nixon, Truman, and all the rest of the gang. Attack those policies, please attack those policies, but let's leave the character assassination out of it.

I think the Democrats would be far better served to continue to look toward the future and to reference past policies based on what they project for the future. People are going to react as strongly against policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the no-knock warrants, the trillion dollar deficit, and we all know who set those in motion and we know who's working to bring things back into a balance.

And while we're on this subject, can we please drop the birth certificate thing? If we aren't demanding to see the birth certificates in person of all the past presidents, then why fixate on just one? And that whole "but he lived outside the US as a child, so that totally negates his US birth" thing is so totally bogus. Are we now saying that to be a US citizen, not only must we be born on US soil, but that we must also live only on US soil during our entire childhoods, thus restricting parents from working or volunteering for extended periods of time in other countries? Is that really what all y'all Birthers are saying?

Move on, people. You tire us with your obsession and your endless neediness and your whining that you didn't get what you wanted. You're sore losers and no one likes a sore loser.

Yeah, I'm bashing the Birthers, because they haven't created any policies, just threw tantrums and hissy fits and behaved in incredibly selfish and short-sighted ways that they've left nothing but themselves to be bashed.

But past presidential policies transcend the presidents who created them and assumed a force of their own that needs to be just as forcefully addressed.

I think politicians need to change the focus from the person to the policy, from the past to the future, and they need to stop obscuring the very real problems this country faces.

Yes, it seems overwhelming, but it is possible to break it down into smaller blacks and address each of those. One step at a time. Progress is being made, and those who wish to gain my vote need to point to that progress and to offer ways to help keep it going.

I never did like getting mired in the past and stuck with juvenile name-calling.