A generation of poor American leadership has finally caught up

In genealogy, a generation is 30 years, the time frame for this post. And more than a fair share of poor leaders have been at all levels, federal as in President or Congress, and their vast hired staffs, down to state governments and local leaders, to include governments, schools, religions, and unions. The evidence is cumulative, mostly embarrassing in its impacts to a Country such as the USA, but also negative in the terrible impacts on the coming generation. While the future will have to reap what our poor leaders have sowed in the decades’ past, so can citizens begin to sow a better new world USA. While all is not doom and gloom, much pain and suffering, as being hungry and cold, will ensue. And we did it to ourselves, somehow. And there are still bright spots that may be dimmed, also. What a shame!

First some cumulative evidence. The very recent success of the French against some small village thug group of a dozen pirates off of Somalia represents leadership vice devotion to committee action and other such interagency time consuming action. The tendency for turning problems like Hurricane Katrina and the recent sub-prime mortgage “crisis” into another mining of the national wealth demonstrates poor leadership. The political leaders’ inability to keep expenses within income means demonstrates a status quo attitude and poor judgment that will become apparent when no one in their right mind will loan us money to pay expenses beyond all the income means. Moodys has already given the USA a window of warning…2017 or so being the year of reckoning. Kids as young as six are now getting legal records of being a sexual pervert for being dumb in school when real leaders might have applied more common sense and a sense of proportion in dealing with this kid. The politician’s tendency to spend the collected monies for today’s benefits at the expense of tomorrow’s demands will have dreadful outcomes, from federal social security and medicare demands to local government unions “guaranteed” expectations. Only poor leaders would do all this to the point where some state legislators, as in Louisiana, exempt their criminal and even poor performance from affecting their retirement benefits. One might want to check out their local state and counties, as a start, to see is something similar is being sneaked by.

All is not doom and gloom. Voters should start with electing leaders who promote standards over excuses and assumptions. No longer will the war on poverty go on forever, where we as a USA continue to spend money on underlying causes without simultaneously locking up the low life criminals. No longer will we accept the simple statements like “restoring USA respect in the world” or “we need another conversation on race” “just on face value”. Standards still imply locally things like basic police protection, fire protection, and health protection having priority over local government union contracts when the governments can’t pay it all. School curriculums and social standards are still the parents’ choices.

That much pain and turmoil will have to occur is the result of our poor leadership over the last generation. One can say we have just had a bout of poor leadership. And while I sympathize with idea that American voters are part of this problem, and have been silly, perhaps dumb, too often self serving in school systems (think jobs over kids), and even naive respondents to the pandering of this last generation of poor leaders still living in the past and even status quo, the obvious solutions have to do with basic American standards, and politicians who can explain all this to the future citizen voters. Temporary political success in our past is no excuse to running a local area, school system, state, or our Country down. And all evidence suggests we need to use our votes are all levels, local, state, and federal, including adding our past poor leaders into the coming suffering groups. If this sounds like pay back, it is not. It is sending a message to future political leaders, as in live like “us”, and succeed together. Voters will back up “ future winners”. We could sure use a “bout” of strong future leaders.