The waters of the political primary season are still boiling over the most recent Democratic party debate, particularly over the line of questioning for senators Clinton and Obama. The ABC network questioners Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ignored matters that you and I really care about and that affect the future of the country while digging into largely meaningless personal histories. Do they consider us too dumb to know or care?

As it says at the top of this blog page, I feel that life would be better if operated on sound business principles. If you were interviewing a potential CEO for a large and important enterprise, (America certainly is that) would you interrogate the candidate about their pastor said in church at some point on a long discarded calendar? You might ask about how they handled a past problem or crisis, looking for how they think or act when the pressure is on. You would probably present them with a description of a current issue and ask how they would go about handling it, while evaluating their clear responses and courses of action.

If the large business enterprise is bleeding money during a time of decreasing revenues, that might be the number one subject for questions. With a business unit (Medicare-Medicaid for example) floundering with expenses out of control, you’d probably want a sense of what they would do about that. They may not be the easiest issues to get a handle nor do they make for short and emotional sound bites, but they are among the many elephants in the room that will have to be dealt with sooner or later and delaying confronting the problems will only allow them to grow into larger snarling monsters.

I’m often brought back to the immortal lines from Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” when he says “You want the truth—you can’t handle the truth.” Are we at such an awful place that in critical political contests journalists feel that Americans don’t want an honest look at important issues? Do high level political candidates and media mavens believe that sensational questions and rabble rousing serve to inform and help voters? If this election is fought on the old wedge issues of God and guns, I’m confident that no matter who wins, we’ll be angry within the first 18 months of the new administration. Why—because the real issues will still be weighing heavily on all Americans. And if that is the case, there is a train wreck just around the bend.  

One sad aspect of all this for me is that I feel we now have generations of people who’ve been brainwashed into feeling that governments are smart and the electorate is somehow less than aware or capable of insightful decisions. Just tell them what they want to hear so that they can watch the basketball playoffs with some level of tranquility. When did we conclude that politicians and elections have to be seen as a soap opera? How did we start confusing lip service with leadership?

In the private sector we’ve just seen a wave of CEOs tumbling from their perches because they allowed companies such as Merrill Lynch and Citigroup to focus on short term profits without a long term view to a healthy future. Though the debates that sealed their fates took place behind closed doors, they were probably based on hard facts and real numbers, not prattling innuendo slinging. I suspect those heated board room meetings were about problems, truth and solutions. It is doubtful that chief executives were asked what their wives, psychiatrists or clergymen had been telling them simply because in context, it really doesn’t matter.

Somehow we’ve been taught that fiscal gravity works differently in the private sector than it does for governments. Well, Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple gave us the truth that on this planet, gravity eventually treats us all the same. We can all see the evidence around us now that troubling things are happening in our land. Americans are not dumb and denial isn’t a river. If we don’t respect our heritage and voters of all parties by seeking truth and real solutions to myriad problems, we only need to read the history books on the Roman and Greek Empires to get a sense of where this road leads. Certainly the electronic media operating under federal license and in the public trust should lead the way. I hope the shameful squandering of national TV airtime shown in the most recent debates isn’t repeated between now and the election.  Truth or consequences isn’t just the name of a small town in New Mexico.