Mr, Friedman - You almost got it right

Below is my response to the NY Times Piece by my favorite columnist Tom Friedman

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22friedman.html?em

Thomas Friedman’s piece titled Advice from Grandma cogently framed the American dilemma – and challenge. We celebrate democracy as the template for governance. As Mr. Friedman aptly suggests, one can never count out a society that fosters dreamers and innovation. Yet this piece begs the question has democracy become cannibalistic? Have we become a society in which ideas, dreams and vision are allowed to foster and develop in an ethereal world, but then die or morph into something else as the political realities impose their will? As Mr. Friedman pointed out the left has issues with the pace, and breadth of change that is being produced by the Obama Administration, yet the left’s angst overlooks in my opinion, that our current system is designed to deliver marginal change at best.

In a most recent blog that responded specifically to Arianna Huffington’s assertion that President Obama has become “timid” I wrote that “The intractability of the status quo, the pervasive influence of special interests, the widening gulf between the parties and the “dumbing down” of the American voter serve as minefields designed to have a deleterious effect on any progressive legislation” which is to say – I get it. Therefore, my issue is not with the present leadership, but with the system that produces leaders. Mr. Friedman concludes his piece by saying we need better leaders, et al, I would revise his conclusion to say that we need a better system.

My vision of a better system would include term limits for both Houses of Congress, and a one year six year term for the President. I also feel that other reforms are needed to limit the pervasive influence of special interests, and the political courage not to allow special interest groups to hide behind First Amendment free speech guarantees to do their political dirty work. Until we awaken to the reality that as currently configured, our system of governance is broken beyond repair, and develop the will to make systemic changes, our leadership and political apparatus will reflect the will of the dream killers not the vision of dream makers.