Telling It Like It Is: A Major Political No-No

They must think we voters are dumb, naive, gullible, apathetic, hopeless or all of the above - and maybe they're right.

Listening to and reading the words of the leading candidates for presidency of the obviously Divided States of America, one (this one, anyway) sorrowfully concludes that they're all playing the Daddy Warbucks game.

Heads-up to younger folk: He was the comic strip character who tap-danced into and out of the life of Little Orphan Annie, beginning in 1924, couple of years before I was born. Richer than Croesus and bald as an M&M, he was magnanimous in his promises but curiously unwilling to expand Annie's wardrobe beyond a single, shapeless monochromic frock until their recent resurrection in a Broadway musical.

Pause here for a tad of trivium: DW earned his name and his "$10 zillion" fortune as a munitions monger during World War I (the war-to-end-all-wars which preceded World War II, et sequitur).

The Warbucks modus operandi was somewhat similar to that of our current crop of would-be chief executives, who are long on promises, but short on delivery and blind to the more ominous of our national realities.

Take our economy, for example: Anyone even minimally using their eyes, ears and brains must be aware that America is living far beyond its means, if not spending itself into future bankruptcy, with the worst of that fiscal self-destruction yet to come.

As you read this (and prepare to weep), the vanguard of our Baby Boomers are reaching early retirement age, while our Social Security "fund" is nothing more than a mounting pile of IOU's, increasingly held by our "trading partners" in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. This truth is not even muttered during exchanges of fire and ire in the present campaigns.

The "entitlements" expected by our post-war "begats" are treated by politicians like sacred vows, to be violated at the cost of their "assituations" in various seats of power, blithely refusing to face this stark reality: The only ways to avoid a massive train-wreck on the track ahead is to reduce benefits and/or raise revenues - neither of which course is likely to be suggested this side of Election Day. Reality, it would seem, is to remain unwhispered until thereafter.

Mutually acknowledged on both sides of the aisle (as well as at every gin mill, cocktail party, cookout and kaffeeklatsch in the land) is the fact that hordes of illegal immigrants are in our midst and more arriving daily. No candidate worthy of the shame is bereft of a sober recognition of the problem, nor willing to propose measures which are both remedial and immediately doable, even if unpalatable to certain pressure groups.

Mismanagement and misdirection of public funds is also seen by all hands (some of them covertly in the cookie jar) as an unspeakable outrage, even as they pander to predatory lobbyists, their campaign contributors and ideological ditto-heads. Pork and prejudice are still dietary staples on our governmental menu.

While our mounting public debt continues to swell like an Oktoberfest beer belly, with health costs as a major contributor, some (happily not all) candidates dangle free and universal care as a cure-all for all physical misery, ignoring the fact that socialized medicine has been an inefficient boondoggle wherever it has been adopted.

People who can't afford health care (or food or shelter) should be helped, of course. No others, though,should be forced or enticed into government dependency. That just isn't and never was the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We're already hunker-deep in hock to other world entities, being gouged by oil-rich friends who make enemies unnecessary and hanging a cruel burden of debt on our children, grandkids and beyond, possibly for several generations.

Meanwhile, foreigners are buying into our banking and industrial assets, using the bitter fruits of our trading deficits and depreciated currency.

The culprits? Certainly among them are the incumbents, on whose watches the problems have remained unsolved. This would include a president who failed to unite differing parties and the legislators who reignited, rather than negotiated away their differences. Equally guilty are those among us who live wastefully, save marginally and spend like there's no tomorrow, following no leaders courageous enough to make us aware that there are always prices and pipers to be paid.

Leapin' lizards, as Annie would exclaim, maybe we ARE, as the candidates seem to think, "all of the above!"