Thoughts of a conservative

Leading up to the voting process, we must ask ourselves two questions: First, how principled are we on the issues, or is it all about party politics?

Secondly, the candidates themselves. Was the vetting process by the media objective and thorough? Do you really know the guy?

A recent interview on C-SPAN featured a well-known columnist, author and expert on Chicago politics who wrote a story about President Barack Obama's victory. His thesis seems to be that the tabula rasa political mind should begin with the premise that politics is a difficult, dirty business - that you do what you can, get what you can - and this attitude justifies why politicians cut deals, which sometimes defy virtual reality, just to get the votes. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in 1862, long before Chicago politics, "The only safe rule in politics ... was always to believe that the worst would be done. Then we are not deceived."

Nothing could be truer, even today. Politics is the art of deal-cutting; and in a two-party system, nobody can be in lock-step on every issue. So there is a need for a lot of backroom negotiations. Still, it all depends upon the nature of your belief system. What is your reaction when your guy serves interests that are antithetical to yours? I still think you might buy in, if it's not a hot-button issue for you; or your disdain for the other side outweighs the principle involved.

George Orwell, British novelist and political writer, was ahead of his time when he noted in 1946 that, "In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues." Nothing has changed "in our age," and the never-ending divisiveness does make one weary.

What recently got my attention, and should validate my conservative principles to my liberal relatives and friends, was the opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Schools in Los Angeles at an eye-popping cost of more than half a billion dollars at the site of the Ambassador Hotel where Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. I visited the Ambassador in its declining years, never thinking that it would be the site of the most expensive school ever built in the United States in a state that is broke, and a city that is bankrupt and has laid off 3,000 teachers. Florida is having its challenges, yet Hernando County's price tag for its new high school was $41 million, which means Los Angeles could have built 14 high schools instead of one. And this blockbuster school came on the heels of two other of the nation's costliest schools - both in Los Angeles. One at $377 million and the other at $232 million.

Napoleon was right when he said, "In politics, an absurdity is not an obstacle." Politics? Wasn't this all about education? No. Everything nowadays, as Orwell observed, is about politics; and in Los Angeles, it's all about activist Latino teachers, their union, which is an arm of the Democratic Party and a failed educational system with a pitiful 40 percent graduation rate.

What many of us do not know is that the Founding Fathers warned against political parties. To them, parties meant political intrigue and hostility. To that extent, the Founders were idealists who thought that through elections - without parties - the best man would rise to the top and be elected to office. Even George Washington thought that political parties "put in ... place of the will of the people, the will of a party ... an enterprising minority."

How true. But those were simpler times.

L.A. is a metaphor for much that is wrong with urban politics, so let's stick with them one more time. Does anyone think that even in L.A., which is a Latino Democratic stronghold, the Angelenos, if they could have voted on the issue, would have supported such obscene spending for these Taj Mahals, which was clearly driven by special interests? I doubt it. What educational principle was involved? What possible benefit accrued for their children? Why not spend the taxpayers' money for more schools - or for more and better teachers?

Now on to the second issue about the examination and evaluation process of the candidate by the media and the voter. A most logical reason to not support a politician is this: Does he or she have close ties to people we would not associate with? This is rare in national politics, and a new issue with this president.

My closest friends, most of our relatives, and our children are Democrats; but quite obviously, I associate with them and have close ties to them. I love most of these people. As much as Democrats hate Justice Clarence Thomas, Dick Cheney or the usual cast of Republican characters, if they were part of their family, they would think of them as their "crazy uncles;" if friends, they would simply assume they were misguided political junkies. But they would still socialize with them.

The president has, or had, close ties with people even most Democrats would not associate with, to a point where they would feel uncomfortable being around these people. It is fair to say a majority of Democrats would not have close ties with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man who blamed American racism for the 9/11 attacks, praises socialism and damned America. Yet during his 20-year relationship with the president, he married him and his wife and even baptized their children.

Bill Ayers, another friend of the president, who had been a fugitive for years and was a radical anti-American, said "What a country. It makes me want to puke." There have also been any number of advisers over the years who have a passionate belief in socialism or communism as superior political systems. Obama has appointed some to high public office. It should give one pause when evaluating a politician who has such an odd, unsavory assortment of advisers or friends. I believe many Democrats would be uncomfortable socializing with some of these people.

There are candidates who flat out lie about their credentials or backgrounds, and even often escape media scrutiny. But in the president we have an enigmatic and shrewd ideologue whose past is an open book, but largely ignored by the media. Rather than governing, he is a man on a mission to "transform" America. Our ignorance about him was partially caused by his rather thin credentials - one of 59 state senators in Illinois - and then leapfrogging to the presidency right after getting elected to the U.S. Senate. We haven't seen such a person holding a high public office - much less the presidency - in modern history. The traditional media chose either not to investigate him or inform their readers of his background, or identify his circle of friends or colleagues.

We are stuck with who we are, and as much as we are all sick of politics and politicians, nevertheless we are by nature political. As Aristotle famously said, "Man is a political animal." With that in mind, we would do well to use our own principles as a template - a starting point when making critical political decisions - particularly in the selection of our leaders - and not depend upon the media or the group-think of our party.