Sunday, December 04, 2005

Since it wouldn't be Sunday without an Oscar

I stole this from his other blog.

Culture Of Losing

The[y] still make decisions based more on comfort than conviction, which is why their culture of losing remains rampant.

You can't fear the unpopular move. You can't fear ticking off people. You can't fear failure in the quest for success.

But that requires a core principle.

Yet it seems the organizational blueprint remains unchanged for decades: Keep telling the [voter] what he wants to hear.

With little editing, Drew Sharp's column about the persistent vegetative state in which the Detroit Lions are now found can easily be transformed into an indictment of the Democratic Party. Long ago Howard Dean said, "I don't think we can win the White House if we vote for the President's unilateral attack on Iraq in Washington and then come to California and say we're against the war." Sure enough, John "I voted for it before I voted against it" Kerry got smashed, and now that the polls show that your average Joe is no longer in favor of the war and Democrats are beginning to criticize Bush's Misadventure In Mesopotamia, what is the first salvo that BushCo fires back? Democrats "actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein." Never mind how Rude that line of argumentation might be, the point is that Democrats should never have been in a position for Bush to flip the script like that, and Democrats would be in a much stronger position if they'd have stuck to their core principles instead of capitulating and compromising their integrity.

Integrity.

Perhaps that's the problem - when a politician's core principle is self-preservation then it is up to us, We The People, to let politicians know that they will be held accountable for their actions by us, We The People. Right now it is Bechtel and Halliburton and ExxonMoble that is holding Congress accountable. That has to change, and the change has to begin with us. We need to purge everyone who voted for the Iraq War Resolution. Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but it's a starting point for a necessary discussion. Let's discuss.