End of the World as We Know It

I'm amazed by the otherwise highly educated, wealthy folks who think Barack Obama and the Democrats are ushering in the end of days.

I'm not kidding. The Tea Party protests this weekend only highlighted what is becoming a low-grade right-wing meltdown. I've heard people—well-educated, professional people at the highest levels of society—tell me Obama is the anti-Christ. Not "might be" the anti-Christ—but "is" the anti-Christ. There are harmful threats against lawmakers. I heard a popular Austin radio host this morning say that, if the mid-term Congressional elections don't go his way, the "next step" is armed conflict.

Hold on a second. The Founders designed a perfectly good system for dealing with popular sentiment. Actually the Greeks designed it first. It's called an election.

Here's a quick lesson for Tea Partiers who may have skipped a couple high school civics classes:

Every two years, the entire U.S. House of Representatives is up for reelection. The Founders did this for a reason. They figured, by checking in so often, the House elections would take an instant pulse of national sentiment. If you don't like what's going on, you can kick out the entire House every couple of years. And Reps. don't have much time to do anything other than campaign based on what's popular. It's why they're always out there on the road in town-hall meetings. It's what they have to do to stay popular.

Senators, on the other hand, are elected in staggered, six-year terms. This was also designed so that there would always be at least one group in Washington who had been there before. It was so they would be a little more connected with each other than with their constituents. This is why the Senate is usually the slower, more deliberative body. It's why it takes months for them to do anything. They have the time to think.

The President, of course, sits in the middle, elected every four years. The President combines the House's popular pulse of frequent elections with the Senate veteran's approach to politics.

If right-wingers think Obama is flirting with Armageddon, vote him out. Same goes for Congress and state and local office holders.

This system has worked for almost 225 years—through a Civil War, two World Wars, The Great Depression, myriad business cycle recessions, tax cuts and tax raises, political and personal scandals, and the rest of modern American history. Anyone who thinks we are at an unknown crossroads of national status has not read or does not understand history.