By Herbert E. Meyer
AmericanThinker.com
America is on the verge of something
unprecedented in history: the peaceful, constitutional replacement of our
country's entire political establishment. This is what lies behind the
decisions of so many elected officials, at every level, to step aside rather
than fight for reelection. And it explains how the Tea Party movement can
exert so much political leverage without nominating its own candidates or even
without formally choosing its own leaders.
Most of the time, we Americans don't pay much
attention to politics. We focus all of our energy on our jobs, our families,
and our faith. We work hard, play by the rules, and wish only to be left
alone. We love our country, consider ourselves blessed to be living here, and
ask little from the men and women we elect except to keep from screwing things
up.
But in just the last decade, Americans were
shocked by two catastrophes we hadn't imagined our political establishment
would allow to happen. The first was 9-11, when nineteen terrorists
successfully attacked our homeland, and by doing so revealed that for years,
al-Qaeda and its allies had been waging holy war against us. The second was
the 2008 financial crash, which revealed that our economy is a house of cards
built on a pile of debt so high we cannot possibly repay it.
Republicans blame Democrats, and Democrats
blame Republicans. To ordinary, non-political Americans -- who grasp
intuitively, and correctly, that both parties share responsibility for these
two catastrophes -- these politicians seem like children who've turned a party
into a food fight. And what do parents do when a children's party gets out of
control? They turn off the music, turn out the lights, and send everyone home,
including those few who weren't behaving badly and just got caught up in the
melee.
Americans don't like getting tangled in the
details of politics. We prefer to stand back and see the big picture. (This,
by the way, helps explain the extraordinary appeal of Ronald Reagan and Sarah
Palin. That's what they do, too.) What the big picture is showing now is that
our entire political establishment has failed. These were the men and women,
both Republicans and Democrats, we relied upon to focus on the details, and by
doing so, to keep us safe from terrorists and to keep the world's most
powerful economy from imploding. And they blew it. So we'll replace them with
a wholly new establishment -- some of whom will be Republicans, others
Democrats, and a few Independents here and there -- and hope our next
political establishment will get it right.
In the looming political battles, persona
will matter more than policy. As we move toward the 2010 elections, of course
we'll ask candidates to outline their plans for how to improve our health care
system, what to do about illegal immigration, how to bring down the
unemployment rate, how to fight the war, and all the rest. But what will
determine who gets elected this year won't be a set of specific policies, but
something simpler, and in a way much deeper: a recognition among grassroots
voters across the political spectrum that character is more important than
personality, that education isn't the same thing as judgment, and that
expertise without common sense is dangerous.
Stand back from politics and you'll see the
same re-establishment trend unfolding in other public arenas. Americans have
decided that the mainstream media has failed, and so we are replacing The New
York Times, the television network news departments, and all the rest with an
entirely new media, including FOX News and websites like American Thinker and
Lucianne.com. Americans have decided that our country's education
establishment has failed -- our kids are barely learning to read and write,
let alone taught our country's history -- so we're seeing the rise of private
schools, charter schools, and home-schooling. Would anyone like to bet that
within just a few years, we'll have a wholly new financial establishment on
Wall Street to replace the greedy idiots who run it now?
The re-establishment of America won't be
easy, and we'll make mistakes along the way. Some of the new people will prove
just as worthless as they ones they replaced. And some very good people who
now hold key positions in politics, the media, education, and finance will be
swept away by the avalanche. That's too bad, but collateral damage is
unavoidable.
No other country in history has ever
attempted to replace its establishments so smoothly and so peacefully -- and
so cheerfully -- as we are doing right now. And it isn't likely that any other
country ever will attempt something like this. How exhilarating to realize
that 234 years after our revolution, the United States is still the most
dynamic, forward-looking, optimistic place on Earth. Boy, what an exciting
time to be an American.