I woke up Saturday morning to a blue sky outside my window, quite a rare and welcome sight during the wet months here in Eugene. My dog, who had long been awake and anxiously looking out the window himself, trotted into my room, leash in mouth, cocking his head in reference to the conditions outside. Being early for a Saturday, I tried to ignore him and go back to sleep, which was nice for a couple of minutes until the leash was deposited directly on my face. I grumbled, but alas he was right. It was time to go for a run.
Once up, the trail called – dry air and clear skies are anomalous weather for this time of year, an opportunity to be seized. I got out early to Bryce Creek with the dog and started running, in my mandex (as my girlfriend likes to call them), happy to be dry and getting some exercise outside of a gym. The run started out all too well. I hit my stride early, enjoyed the scenery and somewhere along the way became drunk on exuberance and ran for way too long, a lot longer than I usually do. I hurt myself, of course, and the rest of my day was, well, unproductive.
I pose my sorry self as an example to the new Congressional Class of 2007. The rain clouds of stagnancy may have lifted from Capitol Hill, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to run around Congress in your mandex and pull a hip flexor, figuratively. The new Democratic Congress cannot let any overt idealism draw from their ability to affect productive change in the next two years. As I did not, they must pace themselves and they must not slip into troublesome, short-sighted exuberance. They have eight years of hard, hard work to undo.
That being said, however, Congress should not try to impeach the president. It would be a waste of time, money and might spoil the appetite of a nation that craves the junk food bingeing of scandal, as opposed to the healthy diet of steady, effective policy, which is fairly boring if executed properly. This is the kind of policy we need to see more often. The impeachment process would take far too long and would actually accomplish nothing. Impeaching President Bush and Vice-president Cheney, while tempting in its viable ease and satisfaction, would draw focus from more relevant and ultimately more serious concerns: a real plan for Iraq, health care, the future of Social Security, out of control spending, immigration, fair taxes and the dwindling security of American jobs.
The nasty partisan hair-pulling, clawing and spitting that were the midterm election campaigns must now take a back seat, no, a trunk, or one of those aerodynamic roof-mounted storage boxes, to a level headed focus on solutions for the future of this nation. These solutions will not be partisan, progressive or neo-conservative; they will be sound, realistic and most likely the kind of safe bets you don’t make when drunk on ideology. This is boring and creates less sensational material for the media, but it is exactly what we need to see.
It’s time for lawmakers in this country to act as realists and put their hopes for ideological shifting on hold while there are important infastructural and military problems that need immediate, constructive attention. These critical issues need to be addressed responsibly in the form of tried and true political solutions, not “visionary” actions with foundations in radical ideology. It’s time for the executive and legislative’s relationship to come back to earth after its flight through the ether of ineffective policy that characterized the past eight years.
I formulated the gist of this rant as I was running on Saturday. I didn’t stop going because of the opportune weather and my run, sadly, ended in pain and regret. My train of thought, and the resulting convoluted reasoning that stemmed from it, caused me to neglect the mechanical health of my body. Before the new Congress begins the long, sunny, Saturday morning run along Bryce Creek that is an obvious metaphorical representation of its highly pivotal upcoming session, it must take the time for a healthy stretch. It has to be vigilant for the maintenance of our government’s immediate concerns and address them with realistic solutions, as I did failed to do in regards to my hip flexor.
We don’t need a Congress that’s going to bring sweeping change to Washington. In fact, that’s the last thing we need right now. If there’s any sweeping to be done in this next congressional session, it should be of the mess the previous Congress created. It’s time for congress to return from idealism to realism and become solution-oriented, rather than faithfully inspired.
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