PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

Yes, there is one good thing about the debt ceiling “compromise”.

That one thing could turn into many. It is this: the voters got to see where the political parties stand and where the people they sent to DC to represent them will vote when the chips are down. Next year, there is a presidential election, all members of the House will be up and 1/3 of the US Senate. The voters get to decide where we should go.

In recent decades, voters have gone heavily for divided government. They put a president of one party in power and then the other party comes roaring back to take over one or both houses of Congress. This causes a mess, an even bigger mess than that which one party can make on its own. The sort of near crisis we’ve had for the last few weeks in your nation’s capital is just that kind of mess.

If you liked this stand off, it will surely get worse if voters give the Republicans more power in Congress. If the Republicans had control of the senate, too, they would very likely have sent a bill to Obama which he could not sign. He would have had to veto it and then really go through a stare down with Congress. As it was, the Republicans have only the House, so they really could not pass anything on their own. If the Republicans had been in control of Congress, we would be headed toward a partial government shutdown, world wide financial problems( perhaps panic) and the possibility of a world wide recession.

There is some sense to the idea of voting for one party for president and another for Congress, but one has to assume that people are going to be reasonable and have the ability to compromise with the other party. If there is no compromise, there is no America, no fifty states, no common set of laws and, down the road, nothing by conflict.

So, having watched with a certain horror the mess the voters set up, they can now decide which way they want to go. Obama could very well lose next year as the economy, and jobs, continue to difficult and if he suffers from the image of being a weak leader. The one thing the America public will not tolerate in a president is weakness. If they become convinced completely that Obama is a weak man incapable of taking us through tough times, his days in office will be over, kaput.

Now that we know that the Republicans will stab the nation in the heart to get their way, what have we learned about the Democrats? I am afraid that we have not learned much that it helpful to their cause. We have learned they will bend over backwards to find a compromise and then bend over again and again. We have learned that they will insist on next to nothing when it comes to raising more revenue through taxes and we have learned that they will compromise the economic recovery by cutting government spending when it is still needed to help lift us out of recession. The deal they made, they say, is not as bad as it first appeared because it forces the Republicans, down the road, to say what and how much they want to cut spending or face cuts in their precious defense budget. That’s good. We will have to wait and see if anything else good comes out of this.

The main benefit is for the voters: now you know where your representatives stand. If you want to reward them for risking America’s standing around the world, vote for more like them. If you were disgusted by this whole mess. the choice is equally clear: vote them out.

Doug Terry. 8.2.11

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