Why Nothing Ever Changes In DC

by John Hawkins | October 28, 2009 5:31 pm

As I was reading an otherwise humdrum post by Domenico Montanaro over at MSNBC[1], a particular line jumped out at me because it revealed so much of what’s wrong with politics in America today:

We’re soon coming up on the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama’s presidential win. And one of the messages he used during the two-year campaign — with much success — was that he stood for changing the ways of Washington. But a year later, according to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, Washington is about as unpopular as it ever was. In the survey, just 23% say they trust government, which is the lowest number on this question in 12 years. What’s more, nearly half of respondents (46%) support building an independent political party to compete with the Democrats and Republicans. And nearly six in 10 (57%) blame both Ds and Rs for the partisanship in Washington; 24% blame only the Republicans and 17% blame the Democrats. “I was hoping that business as usual was going to stop with the Obama administration,” said poll respondent Brian Gross of Poolesville, MD, “and so far I just haven’t seen that.” As we’ve asked before: Does the president need to do something symbolic to show he’s trying to change the D.C. culture? Maybe veto a bill with earmarks?

Juxtapose the opening line with the last two sentences:

We’re soon coming up on the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama’s presidential win. And one of the messages he used during the two-year campaign — with much success — was that he stood for changing the ways of Washington.

As we’ve asked before: Does the president need to do something symbolic to show he’s trying to change the D.C. culture? Maybe veto a bill with earmarks?

Note that the dream here isn’t to actually fulfill Obama’s promises and change the culture, it’s to do something symbolic that won’t change the culture at all.

Isn’t that exactly what people are sick of getting from politicians in DC?

Endnotes:
  1. MSNBC: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/10/28/2110654.aspx

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