Missing the point - Part 2

Yesterday I saw and heard a speech by Newt Gingrich. Today I will do the same with Mitt Romney.
The number of attack ads here in Florida is unbelievable. I think the ads will effect the outcome and that is too bad. Everybody has a past and everybody has made bad choices and acted poorly at some time in their lives. The more important issue is did you learn from those mistakes. It took me two marriages to figure out how to be a real partner in a relationship. My second marriage and my current marriage are better because of my mistakes in the first. During the early 1970s I was drawn to the liberal view and the policies for helping people that were enacted and promoted by the Carter administration. I even invited Rosalind Carter to speak at a regional human service conference to further those policies. Today I believe I am a better citizen as a result of my earlier experiences, positions, and beliefs.

As I worked with all the "helping" agencies and saw the bureaucratic morass and the lack of attention to the details and impacts the "helping" programs had on their intended victims (clients?), I realized that government was clearly not the tool to help people. The victims became even more dependent requiring ever more government programs to "help". When government did not follow through on their grand design the victims were left holding the bag. (Example: de-institutionalizing tens of thousands of mental patients from their involuntary placements defined as cruel on the premise that the federal government would fund the appropriate support services in each community. However, the government never got around to part 2 so today we have thousands of "homeless" people instead.) I began to understand the limits of government the the framers had built into our system. Government cannot provide utopia in spite of the wishful thinking of many.

I think both Gingrich and Romney should be judged by how well they understand the design of our government and how well they understand the philosophical and practical principles embodied in the Constitution. They should be looking at how to change the direction our government has turned toward and have a plan for steering the country away from the iceburgs of socialism, the loss of individual freendom, and the dictatorial rule that will be the inevitable consequences of the current course. A presidential plan for creating jobs is irrelevant and actually contrary to the changes we need. On the other hand a serious and practical plan to reduce the footprint of Washington on the lives of citizens is urgent.

Negative campaign ads are only useful when the electorate forgets what the point of the election itself is. Such ads are provocative and titilatting but useless to the decision making process of every voter. I urge every voter to think about how they see their lives tomorrow and  in 4 years and then 10 years. Which candidate has a vision of the world in which you want to live?