by Chuck Correll

Created on: September 17, 2008

What A Wonderful World It Could Be

Our country is at a critical juncture where effective leadership from our elected officials is in many ways more important now than at any other point in our history. In order to obtain and maintain effective leaders the citizenry of this country need to continue the groundswell of political interest and involvement that appears to have begun two election cycles ago with the Bush/Gore presidential election. Young adults are showing an ever increasing interest and involvement in issues, which is very encouraging.

Our involvement shouldn't stop at the election, however. We need to stay involved and hold all elected officials accountable during their tenure in office. Once elected, we need to challenge our leaders to be the best they can be and to once again put the interests of the American people first and foremost.

We need to restore a sense of "Americans First" at all levels of the political spectrum so decisions are made that truly benefit the common good and are not self-serving to any particular special interest group, be they political, religious, corporate or other. We need to restore thoughtful, respectful political discourse and immediately end the endless bickering, which is encouraged by the sensationalist "news" shows on cable, which has resulted in total political gridlock.

But let's not focus on what is wrong in this country today, but what could be. Our ability to visualize the wonderful things we could accomplish as a nation versus focusing on the negative situation we are currently in might just lead us out of this morass.
Let's look at just a few issues that, if acted on properly, could have true, lasting and positive impact on our country.

What if our politicians truly put country first, as opposed to merely adopting it as a political slogan, and reached across the aisle and made a true effort at reaching legislative solutions that would benefit all citizens? What if all political gridlock ceased because politicians decided to actually work together, reaching compromise on 90%+ of all bills put before them? Congress's approval rating is low for a reason.

What if parties ceased strict adherence to political ideology and voted on issues based on their individual merit? Party ideology is somewhat of a misnomer anyway, because all Democrats don't have the identical opinion on abortion and all Republicans don't have the same opinions about school prayer. We, as a people, are not so homogenous in our thinking that we

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