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Let’s Clean House
by David E. Meadows , 2005

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, October 16, 2006

Sometimes you have to vote the entire lot out and start over. Kind of like firing most of a team, replacing the coach, and showing up for the new season with great expectations. Right now, there is little glimpse of any great expectation from our government. Ethics and integrity are two words both parties are throwing around, seem to understand little, and practice at the whim of the minute-especially when a cover up begins to unravel. It’s the chess of politics.

It’s time to vote the entire lot out and start over with new blood. Our current body of elected officials seem unable to place the good of the nation ahead of the good of the party. Let’s reward them by giving them more time to spend with their family.

We are at a juncture in our nation’s history where we should step back, look at where we are, where we are going, and change those faces in Washington. It matters little whether each of us agree or disagree over the Iraqi conflict; the growing terrorist threat; or, a congressman who plays email tiddlywinks with young boys. We each have our own ideas about growing health costs; Social Security; our porous borders; the fifth column of illegal immigrants, and/or the overarching worry the war on terrorism causes. Instead, what we see are a paralyzed bunch of elected officials unable to accomplish a damn thing unless it benefits their own party or own self interests. Instead of focusing on issues that worry the minds of everyday Americans, we have bribery, scandals, and power-hungry party hacks driving the performance from the state level, to Congress, all the way to the Executive Branch.

And, every election we fight traffic, weather, and disruption of day to day routine to push our way to the polls where we return the incumbent because they say they’ve done a great service to their constituents. When was the last time each of us saw our elected official- local, state, or federal? When was the last time we heard from him or her? Election year? Or, when gasoline prices go down-but, that’s redundant because it is an election year.

It is as true today as in 1787 when our founding fathers sat down and wrote the Constitution. They worried as much about the fragility of human nature to gain and abuse power. It is the primary reason they designed a government with three separate branches, with separate powers, and separate purposes-to keep watch over each other. It’s an ineffective way to run a country; but it’s an effective way to allow the people to clean house before government corrupts in such a way that the rights of Americans become the income of the elected.

Let’s march down to the polls this November and send a strong message to those who wish to weld our power in governing our nation: Let’s vote all of them out and start over. Sometimes, we voters must put aside incumbency to fight the abuses of power. No other nation has such a government where the power of one vote can transform it.

This November, we should vote for new blood, new purpose, and new vision. A vision that recognizes we have little choice in our role in the world, but a new vision from a fresh perspective–a perspective of the electorate. You and I are that electorate. We are the government; not the Republicans nor the Democrats. When all is said and done, we are the power of our nation and that power rests in that ballot that fills our hand every election. Let’s chart a new vision and course for America that springs from the might and power of our vote.

‘Clean House’ should be the mantra, and while we’re at it, let’s include the Senate.

David E. Meadows / SixthFleet.Com David E. Meadows Washington D.C. E-Mail readermail@SixthFleet.Com