Remember when there wasn’t a crisis every day involving the President and the White House? For generations, Americans went about their business and heard little about what was going on in Washington. The term “Breaking News” on the radio and TV really merited paying attention to–as there was hardly anything major happening that would warrant an “interruption of our regular programming”. Those were really good days.
Now, crisis, disaster and egregious mis-statements are everyday norms. It’s at the point where if I’m not getting news alerts every day from the major sources, I worry that something is wrong with my Iphone. Can you think of the last day where you didn’t look at your news timeline and wonder “What the hell is going on with this administration?”
I worry that like with so many other things today, we are just going to accept this level of ineptitude, reactionism and inconsistency as the “new normal” for the way Government is supposed to run. We’ve come to just laugh off reports about the military buying $47 hammers and state highway projects running 300% over budget. “That’s government for you” we’ll usually say after hearing those stories. Actions that raised serious concerns throughout the country in the lead up to World War II or during the Watergate crisis today result in a “meh” from most people–as they return to the comments section on Facebook to discuss who should be the judges for the revival of American Idol.
We should not accept lurching Presidential actions, idle threats and general incompetent actions of aides and subordinates to become our new “normal” for governing. Not knowing how government works is not “bringing a new perspective to Washington”. Blaming media coverage for negative outcomes is not “standing up for the people”. And issuing a series of tweets at 5:00 am is not “providing strong leadership”.
We are better than this as a people–and we should demand better than this from our President and his staff.
