Posted by
flagwaver on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 1:05:28 PM
I heard once that character is not what you do when everyone is looking, but what you do when no one is around. It’s like if you find a wallet full of money; it does not take great character to return the wallet if you find it with a group of people around, but it says something if you find it by yourself and return it then. When your friends are around, you do the right thing so that they think well of you; when you’re alone you do the right thing because it is the right thing.
This brings me to my major point, which is the lack of real character we see in our political leadership today. And it is not just at the national level, we see it all levels of government. Take my beloved state of North Carolina for example; we have had a well known sheriff convicted of corruption charges and the former Speaker of the House for our General Assembly, Jim Black is soon to report to prison for taking bribes. At the national level we have had a President face impeachment for lying to a court, Mark Foley caught up in a sexual scandal, and William Jefferson caught with $90K stashed in his freezer. And that doesn’t even touch on the unsavory things we see from our “leaders” that may be legal, but are totally unsavory.
It seems that our system of having professional politicians in charge of the government has bred a sense that character is not really needed, just a good grasp of how the system works. Our “leaders” care little about showing good character, especially if it stands in the way of their gaining political power and influence.
Look no further than the way the current leadership of the Democratic Party is acting in regards to the war in Iraq. These same politicians that demanded multiple debates and votes to give the President authority to remove Saddam Hussein now pretend that they were somehow bamboozled into their votes. When the outcome of the conflict was looking like it was going to be a repeat of Desert Storm, the Democrats were there with us with bells on; they planned to have a part in the glory of victory, but as the fight has gone on hey have abandoned their former positions. John Kerry ran a presidential campaign on the premise that he was mislead into his authorization vote, and Hillary Clinton is going for a reprise of that. It didn’t work in 2004 and probably won’t in 2008 either, but it is a good look into the character of the Democratic Party. Character and the Democratic Party are almost at the stage of being oxymoronic---the two just don’t go together!
And the GOP is not much better. This party, in the blind pursuit of electoral victory has abandoned the very character that set it apart from the Donkey Party. Gone are the ideals of smaller government, curbing governmental influence, and cutting spending. In their place we have seen the GOP substitute a scaled down Democratic ethic; a willingness to grow spending, grow government influence on the individual, and to create new government entitlement programs. And we have our requisite Democrat-lite candidate, Rudy Giuliani, whom the press and the GOP establishment are pushing on us at every turn as “the frontrunner”. This man has stepped on nearly every policy prescription that the GOP has held dear: he is a gun-grabber, a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual rights liberal. And this is the man the GOP would have represent it at the national level?
For me, I am looking for a candidate with character to support. I want someone that I can trust to do the right things for this country even when that may not be what is best for him politically. I want someone that I can trust to do the right things, not because everyone is watching but because it is right…period.
I hope, for all our sakes, we can find that type of candidate.