Saturday, August 30, 2008

Gotcha Politics - Get This!

August 28, 2008

We have entered into the Golden, nano-second Era of Gotcha politics, where a shot of Obama not saluting the flag is actually not from the pledge of allegiance but the national anthem, and yet it’s deliberately misrepresented to make him look bad. And to make someone else look good by stomping on another’s head and heart.

Gotcha journalism is fat-belly, scratch your tummy, Monday morning QB sideline, couch potato, double cheese, overcooked potshot media that deserve to be called on their lazy disservice to journalism and the business of this country. It betrays the noble, even sacred goal of making this country more just and successful for all. It is for those who don’t want to take any time to look at the real issues which aren’t simple, are the most real and important, aren’t easy to solve and impact all of us.
Energy
Economy
Debt
Taxes
Foreign policy
Health care
Education
Housing
…You name it!

All require the difficult consensus and give and take and information gathering and “walking a mile in the other’s moccasins” from many entrenched groups with their own motives and agendas
All require sacrifice
All require imagination
All require putting the business of the greater good at some point above 100% self-interest
In other words, all are tough, hard work, and real interaction, and demand ethics that require fairness, honesty, transparency of one’s own motives, accountability and commitment to being part of the solution....even a national community. And who wants that? lol

Nick Lowery
(go to http://www.loweryspeaks.com/ for this blog and newspaper column)

Amnesia: The Lost Contract for America

August 29, 2008

As someone who worked in the last year of the Reagan and first year of the HW Bush Administration, I have often wondered why the Contract for America was so quickly forgotten and even disrespected by this administration.

The Contract for America was created honorably by a Republican party that was further extending the integrity to the Reagan vision of limited government: Limited government that frees its citizens to achieve and create new solutions, new relationships, new economies through entrepreneurial imagination, research, risk and hard work.

That Contract was abandoned with dispatch in the past 8 years as if it never existed. And where was the media to hold them accountable? Instead, as you all know, it has been replaced by a notion of “limited’ government that places no limits on our outreach as the world’s lonely (and often poorly informed) policeman, requiring a domino politics of blind loyalty while turning a blind eye to those citizens – and returning soldiers – here at home that we can do something real and measurable about. This is not to say that going to war isn't ever necessary when carefully and honestly, and courageously conceived. Just ask Colin Powell and Norman Schwartzkopf.

Generals Powell and Schwartzkopf have often talked on record of the powerful lessons of Vietnam that they took to 1991's Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. They had learned that the leader must face the danger, the bullets and the pain just as his soldiers in the trenches do; they must see the fighting close at hand to know not only the accurate conditions and best tactics of the war, but its all too real human cost. As such, they never took the cost of one life for granted. And they led heroically and successfully. We have not witnessed our military's leaders in the trenches in the same way this time around. I was in Iraq two years ago for a week, and flew Black Hawk helicopters to 8 military bases (go to “Nick’s Kick” at http://www.headgamesradio.com/ for the diary I wrote for that week in USA TODAY) . The military themselves are highly committed and honorable, courageous people. We owe them a great deal. But the ones who call the shots are not those on the ground risking their lives but those who know no risk and no immediate human reality that might sharpen their vision and mold their decisions with the fresh oxygen of real life.

Limited Government is a powerful notion that speaks to America’s genius. It is time for Republicans to take back the party from the military-industrial Jabba the Huts – and for that matter, the obese oil industry execs who would eat their own young to cement their own fortune and power. Limited government is about freedom for the true adventurers, achievers, leaders – and heroes - of America.

Nick Lowery
(go to http://www.loweryspeaks.com/ for this Blog and more)