Bucks County Herald – January 7, 2010

Patrick Murphy, Tom Friedman

Dear Friends,

Good morning. I thought of Otto von Bismarck as the U.S. healthcare debate became ugly. Bismarck, the Prussian mastermind who engineered the unification of Germany in 1871, stated that the German people should not be allowed to witness two things…the making of sausage and the making of laws.

They are messy, Bismarck accurately observed.

The messy, odorous process of law making in America has polarized both houses of the congress even though American voters don’t see it that way. I thought of Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8^th District) as I read Joseph Karlesky and Berwood Yost’s column in the Inquirer (Dec. 29).

“The stark divide on Capitol Hill is not reflected among Republicans and Democrats [voters] who responded to a recent poll,” the writers opined. “The partisanship between Republicans and Democrats in Congress is much more intense than it is among voters themselves. Even more intriguing is that the divide between Capitol Hill and citizens is much sharper now than it was during the first great change in American health-care policy, the enactment of Medicare in 1965.”

Congressman Murphy will stand for reelection this year. He is seen as a representative who is a fiscal conservative but has liberal social views. His district mirrors those attitudes. On the other hand, Murphy’s opponents argue that he’s not a fiscal conservative because he voted for expensive health-care provisions. Murphy also voted to spend billions on the economic stimulus.

My Republican party on the other hand is convinced that opposing President Obama on every step will insure that the GOP will have success this year and beyond. Either the Republican Party is right or it’s about to go the way of the Whig Party in 1856.

In my opinion, the only chance that the Bucks County Republican party has to unseat Murphy is to find a pro-choice, fiscal conservative with a military background. We’ll see.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to determine whether Murphy can convince enough Congressmen to end the 1993 “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for the military. Elected officials usually lag far behind voter attitudes. Murphy is President Obama’s point man to rally legislative support to rescind “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Polls show that voters think that the policy is wrong. So does a majority of the military.

And after I read Paul Jablow’s op-ed piece in the Inquirer (Dec. 27), I thought about Congressman Murphy again. About a year ago, I wrote a column about the value of compulsory service. As you know, I believe that every youngster age 18 or high school graduate (which ever comes first) should give two years of service to America.

It doesn’t have to be spent in the military. Assisting teachers in the public schools; or health-care facilities; or the park service would be fine with me. Depending upon what the administration’s objectives are, I’d create a pay scale, which would encourage young people to choose services which are needed most.

At the time, Murphy’s response was mixed. He likes the idea of young people serving America but was not ready to endorse a compulsory component.

The gist of Jablow’s column was that national sacrifices have steadily vanished from view. “War has become not just “safer” for most of us, but almost invisible,” Jablow wrote. “It has receded from everyday consciousness into background noise.”

How many of us believe that America would have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan if every young person had a two-year obligation (military or not) to fulfill? Parents would have been protesting in the streets.

Last, we can thank Congress and past Presidents for the present state of the union. Thomas Friedman painted an accurate picture about America’s three-decade leadership failure in his op-ed column for the New York Times (Dec. 23). Here’s what Friedman observed in a conversation with Denmark’s Minister of economic and business affairs at the climate conference in Copenhagen.

After the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Denmark found that it was totally dependent on Middle East oil. (So were we; and we still are.) Denmark’s solution…“It used higher energy taxes to stimulate innovation in green power and then recycled the tax revenues back to Danish industry and consumers to make it easier for them to make and buy the new clean technologies,” Friedman began.

“U.S. politicians claim that proposing a 10-cent-a-gallon increase in gasoline taxes to make America more energy independent and to stimulate fuel efficiency is “off the table,” an act of sure political suicide,” Friedman continued.

“How long are we Americans going to go on thinking that we can thrive in the 21^st century when doing the optimal things- whether for energy, health care, education or the deficit- are “off the table,” Friedman asked? “They’ve been banished by an ad hoc coalition of lobbyists loaded with money, loud-mouth talk-show hosts who will flame anyone who crosses them, political consultants who warn that asking Americans to do anything important but hard makes one unelectable and a citizenry that doesn’t even ask for optimal anymore because it believes that optimal is impossible.

“Since 1990, Denmark has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent,” Friedman wrote. “Over the same time frame, Danish energy consumption has stayed constant and Denmark’s gross domestic product has grown by more than 40 percent. Denmark is the most energy efficient country in the European Union. Renewable resources currently supply almost 30 percent of Denmark’s electricity. Wind power is the largest source of renewable electricity. Today, Copenhagen puts only three percent of its waste into landfills and incinerates 39 percent to generate electricity for thousands of households.”

Most of all, Denmark is no longer dependent upon Middle East oil.

We could have made similar decisions in 1973 but our elected officials didn’t have the willpower to do so.

As the Pennsylvania Germans say, Was Komma Du? (What can we do?) “We get too soon old and too late smart,” they add. Term limits may be the only way out of this mess.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith