PITBULL POLITICS

These days I’ll do just about anything to insulate myself from the election rhetoric and speculation and stay away from the cable news channels on TV. Thus I find myself occasionally watching shows like ‘Pit Bulls and Parolees’ or ‘Cesar 911’. 

I like dogs and I have had two dogs, Duke and Rose, as faithful companions in my life but, unlike my youngest son Michael, I’ve never succeeded in becoming a dog whisperer. I now know that showing your dog unwavering love, attention and respect while all the time asserting yourself as the ‘alpha leader of the pack’ is key to success in training a dog to be the companion you want to have. That, together with plenty of physical exercise and positive reinforcement of desired behavior (and absence of abuse and corporal punishment) will shape or rehabilitate the behavior of just about any dog that is considered aggressive, dangerous or unmanageable by their untrained owners and their community. It is amazing to see what a difference people like Cesar Millan (in Cesar 911) and Tia Torres (in Pit Bulls and Parolees) can make in the behavior of dogs who, by their owners and bystanders, are considered beyond control.

This, as a recurring nightmare, brings me back to thinking about the 2016 presidential election. It strikes me that the voters, who have brought Trump to the top of the GOP ticket and Sanders close enough to give Hillary Clinton and the DNC the jitters about a repeat of the 2008, are much like the misunderstood and mismanaged pit bulls of the dog rescue shows. If a dog’s aggressive and unruly behavior can be blamed primarily on bad treatment and neglect from its owner, so can the voters’ ballots in favor of unconventional candidates like Trump and Sanders and their disdain for conventional candidates like Bush, Clinton and Kasich, be blamed on near criminal neglect of the voters by the political establishment. So many constituencies that, together, form the American voting bloc have good reasons to be raving mad about the disregard for their plight and grievances demonstrated by the ruling political elite. It seems that all three branches of government are failing the American people at the same time, just like dog owners who don’t provide proper care and leadership to their pets are failing their ‘best friends’. None of the pressing issues facing the American public get resolved. Not the monstrous inequality, not the out of control national debt, not the immigration reform, not the addiction problems, not the cost of education or healthcare, not the unfunded future of Medicare and Social Security. The political establishment rather sticks its head in the sand than face the need for corrective action.

It is only logical then that people start looking for a dog whisperer, a pied piper, who gives them a voice and articulates their grievances. In different times and nations this would be a time for revolution, for forced quantum change in government like a military take-over or a dictatorship based in an activist power base. In contemporary America, people seem to be pinning their hopes on a dramatic change in control of the White House and are willing to place their bets on candidates that, in their words and politically incorrect behavior, promise a diametrical change in policy. That is why they flock in droves to the two populist demagogues this campaign has put forward.

But this is where the analogy with the dog whisperers ends. The dogs that end up in the care of Cesar Millan or Tia Torres are lucky to be in competent hands that have the expertise and means to rehabilitate the ones that were about to be given up on. The American people are not so lucky. If they follow the pied piper and put either Trump or Sanders in the White House, they are sure to be more malcontent and mad four years from now than they are today. And if the silent segment of the voting public prevails and brings Hillary and Bill back to the highest office in the land, the next four years will look much like the past sixteen and the frustration is likely to grow. It will make the dogs only meaner and more unruly.

What allows the dog whisperers to turn around a seemingly lost cause is the assertion of commanding leadership, supported by compassion, trust and respect for the beneficiaries of their leadership. All of that is sorely missing from this election campaign.

When, ever, has a populist demagogue become the salvation for a nation? Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines? Juan Peron in Argentina? Fidel Castro in Cuba? Hugo Chavez in Venezuela? Abdul Nasser in Egypt? Lenin in Russia? Adolph Hitler in Germany? Benito Mussolini in Italy? Francisco Franco in Spain? They all found the words that soothed the pain of neglect and humiliation in their followers but they lacked the moral authority and statesmanship required to offer their people more than a band aid. To the ears of experienced listeners, the words of Trump sound so hollow, so phony, demeaning and biased and the words of Sanders, while genuine, sound so impractical and retrograde that I find it hard to believe that the voters in November will swallow them as gospel. Yet, if the voters do just that and put their trust in a modern day pied piper they put a nation at risk at a time that it needs to pull together behind a future oriented strategy to stay ahead in the global competition for economic strength and social stability.

Yes, voters have good reasons to be raving mad, but they are barking up the wrong tree.

LEADING NATION

The overriding promise that brought Donald Trump triumph in the GOP primary season is that ‘he will make America great again’. With that slogan he nailed down, with precision, the popular sentiment that so many Americans are harboring these days. It satisfies a yearning that resides deep inside the American psyche. That, of course, is what politicians do. Obama, in 2008, promised a much desired ‘change’ from the Bush attempt to lead the world. And Trump just carries this a step further and promises to make America great again. What is wrong with that? It has caught on like wildfire and upset all the conventional wisdom about American election politics. The problem is in the presumption implied in the message.

This presumption, that Trump builds his whole campaign on, is false. America is a great nation by any yardstick or measurement. It is just the American political system that stinks and—if that is the problem—Trump is the must unsuitable candidate to do something about it.

For a world power to be called a ‘leading nation’ in this age of globalization there must be a flock of sympathetic nations to lead and Trump has been doing a terrific job of alienating just about every ally we have. Admittedly, there was a time, like when Britannia ruled the waves, that a nation could lead the world simply by extension of power, but that era has come and gone. The world now looks for real, substantive, leadership in world governance, in advancing the world economy and improving the living conditions for the whole world population now and in the future.

America will safeguard and preserve its status as a great nation not by the hollow, boisterous and outrageous pronouncements by a demagogue presidential candidate but only by leading by example, by being better than any other nation in creating wealth, in protecting the environment, in attracting the world’s best talent, in respecting everyone’s culture and religious belief and in giving all of its inhabitants a fair shake. A great nation also accepts responsibility for maintaining world peace and prosperity.

A man should be taken at his word. A true leader will say what he is going to do and will do as he says. The only saving grace in the Trump ascension to the GOP throne is that, to the critical thinker, it should be clear that Trump cannot and will not, probably does not even have an intent to, deliver on his more provocative promises.

Build a wall between the USA and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it? Are we finally going to take revenge for the Alamo?

Deport 11 million undocumented aliens and then allow them to come back through the turnstiles of the INS? A sure way of wrecking the economy by taking out the workers, on the farm, in our yards and kitchens, we rely on to do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do anymore.

Refuse people of the Muslim faith entry into the USA? Apart from the dubious constitutionality of such measure, do we really need more hatred, disdain and animosity from and towards the Islamic world?

Put all the mineworkers back to work? To produce coal with nowhere to go than up in the air to give nature an uninvited hand in the speed-up of naturally occurring global warming?

Bringing back waterboarding and a whole lot worse? Apart from the flaunting of American values and the dubious reliability of intelligence gained from these methods, where is he going to find the operatives in our intelligence and security forces, who have already moved beyond such counterproductive techniques, to apply torture in defiance of rules of conduct applied to them?

Revoking NAFTA and other major trade agreements? Can we really afford to ‘go it alone’ in a globalized environment and leave it to China to sign up the trade partners that we now reject? Do we simply ignore the overwhelming evidence that free and fair trade, as a rising tide, lifts all boats?

Reject the nuclear deal with Iran and give the Iranians a clear, unimpeded path, to deployment of their own nuclear arsenal?

It is true that, by the wisdom of our constitution, there is only so much that the President can do on his own and, if elected, Trump will find that he will have to eat crow on most everything he has declared he will do when in office. But, if people are concerned about Obama constantly testing the limits of executive power, wait until you have Trump, who is used to getting it his way in his empire, in his place. And, just by his ‘policy’ statements he can do a world of harm if he does not change his tune once he would occupy the White House.

Ultimately, for the USA to remain the leading nation, it will require a functional system of government in which the executive and legislative branches come together to address the real needs of the nation that are currently unattended to, even as they are at the root of the restlessness of the voting public we see in the emergence of unconventional candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

What we are witnessing in the 2016 election year is a lot of pent-up anger and frustration with the failure of the public sector (the federal government in particular) to acknowledge and address the worries of the average American citizen and now, like eight years ago, people are looking for a ‘fresh face’ promising to finally give them some satisfaction.

That is why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders get so much traction and following.

But are our malcontents barking up the wrong tree?

If you think about the things that our malcontents are upset about, it is not clear at all that a simple change of face at the White House can provide the desired relief. After all, Barack Obama was going to offer change that we could all believe in, but after two almost complete terms it is clear that not much of substance has changed. At least not in the plight of the average American citizen.

What is it that our malcontents are most upset about and fearful of? It may not be the same for everyone, but it will definitely include:

·         The lack of income security combined with an ever increasing burden to pay taxes, medical and educational expenses and to save money for retirement, for children’s tuition and weddings and for elder care for parents; the money pool is shrinking and cost is inexorably rising.

·         The anxiety about the increasing prevalence of addictions, obesity, depression and other mental disorders affecting their lives and the lives of their children.

·         The widening gap between their living conditions and the affluence of the wealthiest Americans.

·         Dissatisfaction with their elected representatives who promise the world but fail to deliver on their promises or hold political/ideological beliefs they don’t share.

The malcontents have yet to come to grips with the fact that the world has irreversibly changed as a result of technology driven global competition. They have good reason to feel let down by their government for not preparing them for the changed environment and for not offering them the cushioning effect of retraining and income support programs. So, they are suckers for anything and anyone offering them the nirvana of a better future. And for someone who promises to go after the perpetrators of their misfortune. Unfortunately they are almost certainly setting themselves up for another disappointment. The ancient Romans already had an expression for this phenomenon: “Mundus vult decipi, decipiatur ergo” which translates to “the world wants to be assuaged by deception, so let it be deceived”.

If the malcontents manage to challenge their furor into the election of a radically different, non-conventional, president of the United States—like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump would be— they are in for another huge let down. They fail to recognize that the problem is not with whoever happens to occupy the White House but with the intransigence of the American political system. Notwithstanding all the campaign promises, a new president can’t bring about a Wall Street revolution nor can he wave a magic wand that will make America great again by curing it of all the ills afflicting it today. Do we ever learn? With each transition from one presidency to the next, particularly when it shifts from one to the other party, comes the promise and the hope that things will fundamentally change, but all we ever get to experience is tinkering at the margin. What stands in the way of real change?

1.       The US Constitution which has carefully crafted a balance of power between the three branches of government.

2.       Two parties dividing congressional seats, as long as they have roughly equal support from the voting public.

3.       The election system, including the frequency of elections, the terms for office holders, the electoral college and some archaic rules of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

4.       The influence of money in politics.

Suppose for a moment that one of the ‘mavericks’ gets voted into the highest office of the land. How will he convince Congress (against the will of the special interests) to begin to roll back the income- and wealth inequality, to simplify the tax code and eliminate most if not all of the exemptions, to shore up the major entitlement programs, to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform plan, to provide relief for the exorbitant cost of healthcare and higher education and to deal with criminal justice reform? The other party, after missing out on control of the White House, will engage the help of the ‘money men’, and not allow the newcomer to steal the show.

There is nothing in the works to change the American political system as we know it. That has some merit, because it protects against an ideologically driven, authoritarian, push by a populist president. But it also stands in the way of badly needed policy adjustments that would put America back on the right track. All the demagoguery of the populist candidates in the election campaign to the contrary, the next president will not be able to do more, or better, than his predecessors unless the gridlock in Washington DC is broken by fundamental changes in the political system.

In the meantime it is alarming that the two populist candidates, as far apart ideologically as they and their parties appear to be, are fanning the flames of the anti-immigration and anti- free trade sentiment expressed by the malcontents who fail to see that import of talent and youth and free and fair global trade are crucial to growth and prosperity for future generations of Americans. In that respect too, the malcontents are barking up the wrong tree.

BIG TENTS

When the 2016 presidential election campaign featured its first GOP debate with 15 candidates and two sessions because no stage was big enough to hold them all, you had to wonder “do all these people fit under one tent?”

Our political spectrum has outgrown the comfort of two party control and it shows in both the republican and the democratic election campaign. Most clearly on the GOP side, where only a few months ago the party bosses went out of their way to make Donald Trump declare his unfailing loyalty to the party and now find themselves openly toying with the idea to find an establishment representative to run a third party candidate in case Trump wins the GOP nomination. But also on the democratic side where Bernie Sanders represents such a far left position that the center and the  traditional liberal positions have to be covered by one and the same person, Hillary Clinton. Now, admittedly, she is eminently suited to play that role because she has proven that she can change color faster than a chameleon and she will say or do just about anything to get elected. In that sense she is a superb politician.

As we all know, crises are too precious a thing to waste. If anything good is to come out of this year’s messy and distressing election campaign, it may be the splintering, the shattering, of the republican and the democratic parties. The end of the antiquated two party system that has outlived its suitability and no longer reflects the reality on the ground. Going into the 2016 elections the number of voters registered as Independent is larger than the number of registered Democrats or Republicans. In fact, Independents may represent as much as 42% of the voters in 2016. If that is the case, how much sense does it make to ask all these people to make a choice between one candidate anointed by the Republican Party and another candidate anointed by the Democratic Party? If more than 40% of the voters does not want to be identified with, or committed to, one of the two traditional parties and wants to be free to base their vote on the merit of the person or the issue in front of them rather than on party affiliation, what sense does it make to try to put them back in the straightjacket of the two party system? Let’s face the facts, the toothpaste is out of the tube and there is no way to push it back in. The modern world is too complex to be captured in a simple duality that was devised centuries ago.

The only feature of our current political system that is more detrimental to good public governance than the existing two party system is the stranglehold of money in politics.

It may, therefore, turn out to be a blessing that we see the big tents collapsing under their own weight. There is no roof large and strong enough to shelter all the big egos of republicans as disparate as Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Paul Rand, Ben Carson and John Kasich (not to mention Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum or Chris Christie). The RNC has lost the capacity to build a platform that seriously addresses the needs of the nation and that all these so called republicans can subscribe to. It leaves the voters no choice but to let go of their party affiliation and go to the ballot box not to vote for the party and the program of their choice but for the candidate or person of their choice.

It is the incapacity of the RNC to articulate a conservative platform for the 21^st century that creatively and effectively deals with free and fair trade, with measures to reduce inequality and mitigate the effects thereof, with a humane and smart immigration policy, with tax and entitlement reform, with criminal justice reform, with reduction in the cost of healthcare and higher education and with the gradual slicing of the national debt, that has enabled a rogue, opportunistic and populist puppet like Donald Trump to steal the show.

If the Republican Party can’t offer constructive solutions for the future let’s see a new party (or parties) emerge that will offer the voting public a clear ideological and practical platform to move forward on.

On the democratic side the situation is not much different be it somewhat obscured by Elizabeth Warren’s decision to stay out of the melee and by the lack of traction that centrist democrats like Jim Webb and Martin O’Malley were able to get in a year where the party had long committed to give Hillary Clinton the opportunity that she was denied by the meteoric ascendance of Barack Obama in 2008.

Why is the republican establishment scrambling to find a white horse that can pull them away from the abyss (of their own making), that has suddenly opened up in front of them by the phenomenon of Donald Trump? Because they begin to realize that they have allowed the party to be gored at the center, to be eviscerated of the stable core of its constituency that has traditionally provided its flag bearer in national elections and that has, more often than not, placed a republican in the White House. What happens to the party influence in Congress and the State Capitols when the party of Lincoln now becomes the party of Trump (the brand identity elevated to the man’s highest ambition)? Where will the loyalties go of the republicans who were elected governor, State representative or State senator? Interesting and important questions. Here is my take: I think that we will be facing a reconstitution of the political landscape in the USA where the time for big tents will have come and gone. It may be tough for party loyalists to accept, but it may be just what the doctor ordered if we finally want to break gridlock in Washington DC caused by a stalemate between two archaic, retrogressive and polarized parties of our forebears. 

SUSPEND DISBELIEF

It can’t really be happening, can it?

It is coming up on two years since I finished writing my book ‘NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, A First Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’ in which I voiced my concern about the direction the American political system had drifted in and now I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. This is a classic case of the need to be careful what you wish for. I argued for a fundamental change in the American political system and that appears to be on the horizon now, except not in the way I envisaged it.

I saw the danger for the USA primarily coming from the dysfunction in the Beltway and the resulting inaction on any of the major challenges the nation has to deal with, not from a completely unqualified contender at the top of the GOP leaderboard for the 2016 presidential elections. I have long maintained, and still do, that it matters less who occupies the White House than it matters who controls Congress, the governors’ mansions and the State legislatures. The President of the United States can only do so much on his/her own. That part our founding fathers definitely got right. They did not want another king or emperor in charge with imperial power and unbridled authority. But that does not take away that the leader of the free world can still exert a lot of influence on how the world turns, for better or for worse.

In the first place, POTUS is also commander in chief with fiduciary control of the military might of the USA, including its nuclear arsenal. We all want a judicious, steady hand on the nuclear button here at home as with our potential adversaries.

Second, as we are momentarily reminded, POTUS nominates the members of the third branch of government, the Supreme Court and the Federal Appeal Courts. And the judiciary exerts more and more influence on American life by filling the void as the Congress fails to tackle the most important issues facing the nation.

Third, POTUS represents the country in meetings and negotiations with foreign powers and global institutions.

Finally, POTUS has it within his/her power to dominate the public discourse by using the bully pulpit and the free media attention that comes with it. That is what a demagogue values most.

In this context, the primary imperative for any new ascendant to the presidency of the United States is ‘to do no harm’. If you review the record of the 44 presidents the republic has endured, then it is hard to argue that more than a handful of them have been transformational in a positive sense. But generally they have been able to avoid doing great harm to the country, in a way like Hitler has done to Germany, Stalin has done to the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong has done to China. Most US presidencies have been forgettable and done harm only in the sense of wasting time and squandering opportunities. 

But that may change if the American people don’t come to their senses and keep Donald Trump from becoming the nation’s 45^th president. If Trump gets elected and follows through on some of his most outrageous campaign statements about the Middle East, North Korea, China, Russia and Mexico, America will be in a world of trouble the likes of which we have not ever seen before. Max Boot and Benn Steil elaborate on this in an excellent article in the upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard under the title ‘Selling America Short’.

Who can, in good conscience, vote for a candidate for the highest office in the USA (if not the world) who speaks in vulgar, insulting and demeaning slogans only, who promises action no US president is authorized by the constitution to undertake and who refuses to address with any specificity the question what he will do to deal with the most formidable challenges the nation faces?

It is time to suspend our disbelief. The betting world gives Donald Trump better than even odds to not only grab the Republican nomination but also then to proceed and beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. The only authority that can prevent that from happening is not the RNC, the DNC, the FBI, the IRS or the Supreme Court (unless, of course, the IRS audit surfaces tax evasion or other irregularities or the FBI finds evidence of malfeasance at the Trump University), but the American voting public. However, there is a real danger that a significant voting block will be so disenchanted with a Trump-Clinton contest that they don’t bother to go to the polls, which will definitely be in Trump’s favor because his supporters, smelling blood in the water, will not pass up this opportunity.

Do we really want to make the White House the home of a 24/7 reality show, the mother of all reality shows, and make America as disrespected as Italy was under Silvio Berlusconi? Do we really want a narcissistic, idiosyncratic, apprentice at the top of our federal government? If not, let all the voices of reason speak out before it is too late. 

COURTING DISASTER

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia had not been announced for more than three hours or his succession at the Supreme Court turned immediately into a political brawl. It made me observe that, If politicians have no respect for the solemnity of the moment when we should pay tribute to and celebrate the life of a great societal leader, how can we ever expect them to respect their lesser constituents who vote them in and out of office?

Could the people who represent us in elected office, and those who want to be elected, not wait until Justice Scalia had been laid to rest before politicizing his passing in a most distasteful display of partisan posturing?

No doubt, we will hear some of these loudmouths eulogizing Antonin Scalia in the most pious and reverent terms when the funeral service will be held this Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. How hypocritical will they sound when from one side of their mouth they will put this defender of the constitution on a pedestal, while from the other side of their mouth they proclaim, in defiance of the constitutional mandate thrust upon them, that they have no intent to offer the President Obama their advice and consent when the President fulfills his constitutional duty to name a replacement for the departed Justice. What a display of irreverence for the giant champion of the originalist, text based, interpretation of the US Constitution!

Even Paul Ryan, although the House of Representatives has no role to play in the confirmation of appointees to the Supreme Court, could not keep his powder dry and publicly endorsed the refusal by the majority leader in the Senate to deal with the nomination of Scalia’s successor if brought up in this last year of Obama’s presidency.

I am sympathetic to so many tenets of the Republican ideology, like a limited, efficient and disciplined federal government that cedes to the States in most areas of public governance, but I feel zero affinity with the political zealots that are now the most vocal prophets of the right wing demagoguery of what once was the Grand Old Party.

For the Republicans in Congress to respond to Scalia’s death the way they have over the last few days, they must have supreme confidence in two things: that they will regain the White House in the November election and that they will continue control of the Senate. Why else are they, at what could very well amount to a high political cost, so adamant that they will not consider an Obama nomination, even if the president comes forward with an eminently qualified nominee? By their myopic, populist zeal, they are almost daring to be denied by the voters in November. And then what?

It would be a good time for the members of Congress to be somewhat more introspective of their own shortcomings. If Congress is doing the People’s work, the work they were elected to do, they would have little reason to fear a more activist Supreme Court. One of the main reasons why Antonin Scalia resisted in so many cases to join a majority ruling by the Supreme Court is exactly that he did not want the court to provide cover for legislators who were not doing their job. Scalia was fiercely protective of the separation of powers: let the legislative branch do what is constitutionally theirs to do, i.e. write the law, and let the Supreme Court assure that the law gets correctly and uniformly applied. If Congress does its job and legislates the main political issues of our time, there is much less room and reason for the Supreme Court to step into a law making role.

If the Republicans in the Senate stick to their guns, we can be looking forward to a very long period of having an 8 person Supreme Court (that is if no other vacancies pop up in the meantime). Because, if no action is taken on filling the vacancy on the court during Obama’s tenure, it could easily take a year or more to confirm a nominee coming from the next president, particularly if the next president is again a Democrat and the Republicans retain control of the Senate. Is that good for the nation? It would likely mean that some of the stalemate that has stymied Congress will now be expanded to the Supreme Court.

Of the remaining eight Justices, Justice Bader Ginsberg is in her early eighties and Justices Kennedy and Breyer are in their late seventies. How long can we expect them to continue to serve and, if they, or any of them, resign or die will the Congress just stand idly by? What a dereliction of duty would that be! We can only hope that the voters would punish the culprits by throwing them out of office.

Constitutional scholars have already determined that in the history of the United States, on 13 occasions a vacancy on the Supreme Court has occurred – through death, retirement or resignation – during a presidential election year. So, there is enough precedent for taking up the replacement of Justice Scalia before a new President and Congress is chosen.

Republicans are courting disaster, for themselves, their party, but also for the orderly governance of the nation if they don’t come to their senses and do their constitutional duty to offer the president advice and consent when he, as he already said he will, nominates one of nation’s legal scholars to fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court.

TRUMPED UP

For all the money America will spend on the 2016 elections, I’m afraid it will get very little in return. 

Current estimates are that the presidential campaigns alone will spend at least $10 billion in their efforts to put their candidate in the White House. In spite of the exceptionally long list of republican candidates, after the Iowa caucuses there are only a few credible candidates left with a realistic chance to make it all the way to the White House. That is if you believe, like I do, that a self-declared socialist will not survive the democratic nomination process and that the republicans will back away from committing harakiri with either one of the current front runners, Trump or Cruz.

It is interesting that both sides in this campaign, the left and the right, call out for a revolution. Eight years ago the magic word was ‘change’. Now that is no longer good enough, we need a 'revolution'. The rhetoric has been ‘Trumped up’.

Most of the candidates will make you believe that these will be the most consequential elections of our lifetime (why else would they bother to run?), but I have argued before, and still do, that in the existing American political system, the significance and impact of who occupies the White House is highly overrated by the public and the media. It is astonishing that so many ambitious politicians, and now outsiders as well, are willing to disrupt their otherwise orderly lives by running for the presidency of the United States. Don’t they see how little the last two occupants of that office have been able to achieve in two full terms as president? Don’t they see that Barak Obama is constantly testing the boundaries of his constitutional power, because he is frustrated at every turn in his attempts to get even the most modest parts of his agenda accomplished through Congress? Only to get slapped on the wrist by the Supreme Court. Do the candidates still running for president really believe it, or expect us to believe them, when they say things like ‘when elected president, I will …….’, you fill in the rest? Ask them how they will make good on their promises, and they will all fall silent. Without exception, the stump speeches of all remaining candidates are ‘Trumped up’ in that all promises and representations will be out of the window once the election has been decided and the reality takes over.

Here is my dilemma. I, too believe, that we need a revolution. Just not the one that Bernie Sanders wants to see happen, nor the one that the extreme right GOP candidates – juiced up by the radio talk hosts – are promising us. We need a revolution in our political system before we can revolutionize the political agenda.

First, we need to get big money out of politics. No agenda will have a chance to be implemented as long as our representatives in Congress receive their signals from their campaign donors rather than their constituents.

Second, we need a constitutional amendment that mandates a national strategic plan. As a nation we need to get our priorities straight. We need to forge a consensus on what we want (need) to achieve as a nation over the next 10-15 years. And we need to uncouple the time horizon for our national strategic objectives from the presidential election cycle.

Third, we need to restore fiscal order by putting the horse back before the cart rather than behind it where it currently is. An effective fiscal discipline starts with the process of matching the long term revenue stream for the public sector with the cost of the implementation of the national strategic agenda. In simple terms, you first decide what you want to get done, then you project what it is going to cost you and finally you design a revenue generation system that will get you what you need. America needs a complete tax overhaul in the worst possible way. It is time to shift some emphasis from taxing income to taxing consumption. The time for a value add tax (VAT) like the one that exists in Europe has come. And in the income tax arena two principles need to be observed: it should be fair (proportional to disposable income) and certain (no exceptions and exemptions for the people who can afford expensive tax counsel or for companies that have political clout and can move money around). The bottom line on tax reform is that revenues should be made to match expenditures.

Fourth, a slew of changes in the election process should be considered, to include limiting the time allowed for campaigning, term limits, a one term (7-8 years) presidency, redistricting without gerrymandering and abolition of the electoral college.

Finally, the forming of a centrist third party, moving the Democrats more towards the Sanders corner and the Republicans more towards the Cruz corner would have the potential of breaking the stalemate in Congress between the left and the right and would offer the voters a much clearer choice than they currently have.

Without a revolution of sorts in the political system, none of the candidates who are still in the race can give the voters a good return on their investment in the 2016 election. They will all be powerless to convert their slogans into action and all that will remain is ‘Trumped up’ rhetoric, another public disappointment and an even stronger cry for a revolution four years from now.