My new idea for America

I was thinking the other day about the Presidential race, which admittedly I haven't been following too closely. Obama went bowling and scored a 37. I don't think I've ever scored that low. I mean, you really have to suck to bowl a 37. So Clinton tells him he has to "get his campaign out of the gutter" (har dee har har) and some old talking head on Fox or something says, "He should stick to shooting hoops!" and is promptly called out by Jon Stewart, who irreverently says "Well that was...racist!"

Anyway, I started thinking about all of the candidates. Maybe it's because it seems that someone who can only bowl a 37 has to be somewhat removed from ordinary American life. So why should he be president? Yes I know it's naive to think that the President should share concerns with the majority of Americans.

On the real, I don't fault Obama for sucking at bowling. I think it takes some guts to do something in front of the whole country he must have known he sucked at. But then, why would he feel the need to try so hard?

Because - I submit - he's not in the same circle as most people. I hate to pick on Obama - in all likelihood I'll vote for him - but like I said, it got me thinking about the divide between all Presidential candidates and the American public.

Not one of them was born without a silver spoon in their mouth. It seems to me that powerful special interest groups have all the say in who gets to sit in the Oval Office. So tight is their grip on Washington that regular people's concerns will never be paid anything higher than lip service, unless it is somehow aligned with these groups' agendas.

With gas prices going up, I get ticked off every time I fill up. Then I fight traffic (and my commute is much better than the average American's, and miles better than the average Washingtonian) and I realize I'm burning gas shifting between first and second gear so that my hard earned money can go to a government that doesn't care that millions - billions of gallons of fuel is being wasted by people sitting in traffic every day. Why? Because Big Oil is a special interest group. If roads were big enough and numerous enough to solve traffic problems, people would burn less gas and have to fill up less. (They'd be happier, but that is not a concern.) Instead, my government spends billions fighting a useless war, just so that Big Oil and its brothers can make more money. And I sit there in traffic.

Then I get to work, trying to help people who bought Lady Liberty's line about your tired sick and poor figure out a way to stay in the country that beckoned them with the beacon of freedom. I tell the poor foreigner who fell in love with a US citizen that the government will need $1,365 to get the right - oh no sorry, the privilege - to live and work in the United States. And it will take a whole year, and if the poor foreigner is a Muslim male, then security "checks" might take anywhere from 1 to 6 more years. I grow weary of telling my clients what I can't do, and I'm sick of all the disclaimers I have to give. I can't even tell people what to expect. Why? Because my government won't pay the costs of administering the immigration system. The special interest groups don't see it as an important enough concern.

And God forbid if I get into an accident on the way home and get hurt. To add to my pain and suffering I'll have to fight an insurance company, to whom I might pay close to $900 a month for my family, and who will promptly turn around and try to pay out nothing to me when I actually need it. Again, my government doesn't think it's important. Me getting affordable health care doesn't put money in the pockets of the big boys.

So - my idea for America - is that anyone who wants to occupy the highest position of public service in the land - should draw a salary of, say $50,000 a year, and all private holdings be seized and given to charity.

Something needs to be done to bridge the gap between this government of the people and the people. If there's no common ground between the governors and the governed, how can the governors possibly know what the governed need? 'Umar (RA) used to walk the bazaars of his caliphate, listening to people. I'm not saying I want to see Bush walking around Tyson's Corner; with modern communication he can get the message without doing that. But 'Umar (RA) had his ear to the ground. Will any of these candidates, with all the fancy technology and thousands of employees, be able to do the same thing?

Aaah crap. Who am I kidding...