The government's watchdog

The President of the United States has done it again. He has achieved something that is utterly stupefying. Our "Dubya" has slipped out of our collective consciousness.\nIt sounds kind of crazy, but George W. Bush has proven he can be as vanilla as … well, former Vice President Al Gore. \nRight now, Bush isn't even a blip on the radar of the news. Oh, he tried to get some headlines when he appointed an openly gay man to a position. But everyone knows former President Bill Clinton made the headlines with that move.\nSo, besides doing something that's been done before, what is our president doing to receive about as much news coverage as a box of rocks? Well, a look into some headlines on cnn.com might give you an idea:\n"Bush, Jordan's king to talk about Mideast, economics."\n"Bush wants to scrap officer hiring program."\n"Bush proposes 10 percent hike in FDA funding."\nI know. This all sounds like really exciting stuff. \nBut there is little excitement in the political arena for the average citizen. Unless the actions of the government immediately and directly affect us, we seldom seem to care. \nThere are those who love to read and watch every development in the political spectrum, but most of us don't see the world in that light. We care when Uncle Sam is reaching his hand into our wallets and we care when there is some drama involved.\nIt might be safe to say Bush will never receive as much coverage during his term as he did when he was trying to get into office. And while some people might say the election deserved coverage because it was so close, it makes more sense for us to pay attention when Bush is in a position where he can take action. But this isn't the case, and the post-election coverage might explain why.\nTwo things dawned on me after the election. The first was how odd it was that the guy who won the popular vote wasn't more popular (and isn't president). \nAnd the other thought I had was how I forgot that someone was actually going to take office after the last hanging chad was inspected.\nThat's when I realized that no one was really interested in the presidential race. We were intrigued because someone yelled, "Foul!" \nThe government is not that interesting when it's running smoothly. It's just a bunch of procedures that make picking a scab look like a good time. The stories that catch our eye are the things that usually have little to do with actual government.\nWe want scandal. We want controversy. We want tales of Clinton doing strange things in the Oval Office. And we want stories about stupid people who can't work their voting machines.\nThe bottom line is that we don't want to read about the government after the kid throws the paper on our porch. We want to read about the government when we're waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store. This is not a healthy way to get our political news.\nWe should take a better look at our government because we are the ultimate watchdog in the system. We ultimately set the agenda, and politicians are always catering to us. With that said, it might be a good idea if we knew what the heck was going on.\nWe should watch and have a vested interest in the moves our politicians are making. And the point of watching our system is not to agonize about every decision. If we really investigated our system, we would realize decisions are happening right under our noses. And some of those decisions play immediate roles in our lives. It's time we saw that our government does a lot between scandals. And it's time we started to pay attention.