A few days after the election, the winners can gloat with glee while the losers lick their wounds and sadly slither away. Perhaps they'll run again. Likely not.
But the losers will go back to their jobs and normal lives, poorer no doubt monetarily but richer for the experience and for the fact that they are not going to become part of a broken process.
Kathleen Parker said it better than I have ever heard it said before, when she wrote, "Our political system could suck the goodness out of a saint."
Our state, and especially our federal system is irretrievably broken, and unfortunately only the inmates can fix the asylum.
Our governments are stuck in eternal gridlock now. Members of both the federal and state government get elected to their first terms and go off all goo-goo eyed thinking they will make a difference and will work to "change the ways things are done" in either Harrisburg or Washington.
Soon they are stuck in reality. They have no say, no power, no influence. They are told if they want to get re-elected, they need to play ball with the powers that be. They focus on taking enough crumbs back to the home district to get re-elected, regardless of whether or not the price of those crumbs was good for the state or country as a whole. Think "pork."
The only way to change this is term limits.
This would allow all members of the legislature to look at the big picture.
There would be no more working your way up after five terms to some power position and gaining influence along the way nonsense.
Influence for what? Getting re-elected for your whole working life then retiring on our dimes?
The Founding Fathers never intended serving your country to be a full-time job. Serve, vote on what's best for the country, not for a region or party, and then after a maximum of two terms get on with your life's work.
Wait - the legislators would have to vote on this. Fat chance they'll vote themselves out of cushy jobs. We could vote them out. But then we kind of like the idea of "pork"' for our areas, don't we?
So on and on and on it goes. Irretrievably broken, and never likely to change.
Joseph Maschue
Altoona
