The election is over. Reuters and Associated Press are reporting that we now have Senator-elect Jim Webb in Virginia, thus ending one of the more contentious election seasons in recent memory.
In my previous post, I wrote that the most important civic duty we have as Americans is the power of our voice through our electoral process. Regardless of party affiliation, I hope that most of my readers, if not all, participated in this election, the way I would have expected them to. Now that the election is over, it's time for we Americans to work together to ensure that we regain our stature as a benevolent actor in the world arena.
How can I do that? you may ask…
Keep an eye on those who do the bidding for you in Washington. Keep them accountable to you. Let them know what you expect from them. Write to them. Write e-mails, handwritten letters, call them. Regardless of their party affiliation. The fact that my representative in Congress is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, will not keep me from writing her. Nor will the fact that one of my senators is Mel Martinez, another Republican, keep me from writing him. I'm just trying to decide if I should wait until the 110th Congress starts, or if I should just do it now. Keep reminding them that they are there to serve us, the electorate, not just the moneyed class that put them there.
President Bush, for all his lunacy and shortcoming of knowledge, is right to extend that olive branch. It's time to tone down the rancor, give the machine that is Washington a tune-up, start the engine, and head down the road to progress. We have a lot to get done: our health care system is messed up, our middle-class standard of living is under attack by wages that continue to stagnate, the economy is foundering, we're stuck in a war that we were misled into - the list is endless, but so are the possibilities.
The Democrats may have won the election, and along with it the House of Representatives and the Congress, but let's not mistake the real message here: We Americans want REAL progress from our country.
We need a true definition of what “victory in the war on terror” means, in workable terms that we can operationalize (or we need to do something to allow those who put us there to save face, and then get the heck out…)
We need to stabilize our healthcare system so that people who are the most vulnerable can get the care they need - we don't have the best healthcare in the world for no reason - everyone should have access.
We need to prepare our country for the future by preparing those of our workforce who have been displaced to take on opportunities elsewhere (within our borders), in other sectors if need be, if we desire to continue taking advantage of the economic laws of comparative advantage, hence continuing to outsource our manufacturing jobs overseas.
In short, we need to work together to make this happen. There's no time for gloating, and even less time to call the past operatives to task for their failings. Let's let bygones be bygones, and work together toward the future.
The only way we'll ensure everyone a piece of the pie is to keep making that pie bigger and bigger.
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