America is waiting

By the time this column comes out, the 2010 elections will be done. And not a moment too soon.

After two years of near consecutive protest and bloviating opinions by every self described “expert” on cable news saying how this election will be (as they always are) a referendum, a wake up call, a slap in the face to the party in power, we will actually have the chance to see just what we have gotten ourselves into.

Here in Indiana, Todd Young and the Republicans in the Tea Party change no more than Baron Hill represents liberalism.

Greg Knott ran a great campaign as a true outsider with actual reform as his platform, yet his odds of election currently seem as likely as most third party groups, be it Libertarian, Green or other.

And regardless of Tuesday’s outcomes, what will Wednesday represent? If the right wing doesn’t win across the board as they have been predicted by many to do, will the Tea Party put down their guns and inflammatory signs and go home?

Or will they continue to call anyone left of Father Reagan a communist out to destroy America and continue their efforts to completely shut down anything they disagree with?

And of what of a Republican victory? Will the people elected actually attempt reform or merely become players in the game, as guilty as Obama and a million former candidates running on reform and change.

Are they one time advocates of reform who will become politicians that decry their opponents’ taste for earmarks, while padding their pockets with lobbyist money?

Third parties are the only political groups I see that are actually working for true reform, but in Indiana, the only choice for third party politics is the Libertarian party.

Like many outsider parties, particularly in their early stages, the Libertarians run from true reform-minded political outsiders to those who view public education as commodity to be cured by a free market.

Indiana’s own Rebecca Sink-Burris, who advocates the abolition of the Department of Education, is one of these Libertarians.

Burris, however, is perhaps representative of where we seem to be now as a country politically. There are those, such as Baron Hill, who are not so affectionately called the “Washington insiders,” who speak of reform and transparency, yet rarely bring this.

Then there are the people like Todd Young, who might be outsiders but bring no original or new ideas for reform but they merely parrot the same Republican Party talking points we’ve heard for 30 years.

Finally, we have the true outsider third party candidates such as Sink-Burris, who is, unfortunately, pointing out how broken our government is and advocating to elect these candidates to break it more.

There are many more questions right now than answers.

I don’t know if it’s cynicism that makes me expect little to change or optimism. If my column were a Friday column, I could give a more definitive answer to where we will stand.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu