Everything in Its Own Time

When I came across Michelle Malkin’s op-ed on John Murtha last week, I was more than a little annoyed. Contrary to what she may think, it was not the “right” time to bring up her laundry list of complaints against the man for one simple reason – he hadn’t been buried yet.

Also, she lost the ability to tie her contentions in with Evan Bayh’s reasons for leaving the Senate. Then again, I might be expecting too much on that one, since cries of rampant partisanship might not cause everyone to immediately think about silly things like pork barrel spending. But there is a definite connection between the two.

Malkin’s tirade listed Murtha’s questionable deals over the years. One thing she didn’t consider was that maybe he stayed in office so long because his constituents honestly didn’t give a damn about that. The constituents in question have regularly borne the brunt of whatever economic downturn comes down the pike, and rarely rebound anywhere near as well as many other Americans. The pork barrel and other questionable spending Murtha consistently went after also kept many of his constituents from economic ruin. When your choices are poverty or a reasonable job, it’s amazing how quickly you stop worrying about “how” that job is gotten. And for that matter, you also don’t tend to give a damn whether or not the politician that got the jobs into your area benefits from the deal as well.

Now that we’ve established that there are voters in this country that honestly don’t give a damn how politicians get silly things like jobs (no matter how few, or for how long) into their home districts, we can get into how breaking the rules in Washington is part and parcel with the rabid partisanship Bayh dislikes. The cutthroat nature of politicians like Murtha is at the heart of the partisanship problem in Washington. It’s not so bad when you just have politicians running about trying to scrape together all that they can for their constituents. It gets ugly when you introduce ideological bullshit to the mix.

Both sides have their problems with this – the left with their desire to have the government take too great of a role in people’s lives, and the right with their desire to have the government take too great of a role in people’s lives. No, that isn’t a typo. Health Care, Nanny Laws, Marriage Protection, Sexual Education, Abstinence Education, Outlaw Abortion, Protect Abortion Rights, Global Warming, Global Warming Denial, Birthers, War etc. And in the midst of all this partisan ideological bullshit is a broken financial regulatory system that left us on the brink of a depression, and a recovery program that may or may not be headed in the right direction.

The saddest part is that if for just a few weeks everyone on the Hill would set aside all that bullshit (including the war, by letting the military commanders handle it without squawking from Washington), and just focused on that financial regulatory problem, and on taking time to listen to experts on where the recovery program needs to be going, they might realize that a lot of the ideological bullshit could be part of the solution. Now, no matter what, the stuff that implies that the government needs to legislate morality (marriage protection, the abortion issue, abstinence education, etc.) is only going to push us closer to that evil form of government we’re supposedly fighting against in the Middle East anyway – theocracy. But whether you believe in global warming or not, clean energy is the future. It will create jobs. Jobs are what we need to get out of this recession. Some of those nanny laws, like about not using mobile devices while driving, might lead to technology jobs – maybe jamming devices in vehicles that would prevent the gadgets from working while the vehicle is in motion? (The real challenge would be to make that sort of thing work only for the driver – now that sounds like something that would take quite a few eggheads to invent, and thousands of factory jobs once they do it.)

And what does all of this have to do with an etiquette lesson for Michelle Malkin? While ranting about the terrible things a politician did in life once he’s dead might make you feel better about yourself, it does absolutely nothing to solve the problems we have now. Doing such a thing before the man’s been buried just shows that you don’t have basic human respect for the man’s family. Failing to suggest potential ways to prevent behavior like his in the future leaves you looking like someone who just wants to point out the negative in this world. Negativity is what got us where we are now – simplistic, but true. Take your bullshit and share it with everyone else who isn’t interested in moving forward. We already know what the problems are – bring us some solutions next time.