by Forrest Baker

Created on: October 05, 2010

Emotion rules the human condition far more than reason. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant, it simply is. It is through emotions that politicians play on us, and we, like so many well tuned instruments in an orchestra respond in a symphonic display of reckless abandon. We may attempt to rationalize or justify our emotions. We have all justified anger over something someone said that 'made' us angry while somewhere in the back of our minds, the cold logical side shouts out, "They can't make you feel anything dummy, you let yourself become angry."

We are about to punish a political group ( Democrats in this case ) because there is a perception that they have not done enough to fix the economy. The sad truth is there is little that can be done politically to 'fix' the economy. The issues are too deep rooted and have been occurring for far too long to simply be fixed by politicians easily. Admittedly, the Democrats have managed to dig their own grave by promising that the economy would be healed if only we spent more money. If we had been paying attention to the facts economists were telling us during early 2009 we would have noted that the 'stimulus' proposed by Democrats and the expected recovery even without a stimulus happened to be the same regardless of passage of the bill.

So when summer commenced the Democrat leaders hailed it the 'Recovery Summer' knowing that even had they done nothing jobs were expected to come back at that time. Jobs however did not rebound in the Summer of 2010. This may simply be a delayed hiring action brought on by anxiety of increased taxes and a whole new layer of bureaucracy brought on by the Health Care package ( again the Democrats managed to shoot themselves in the foot ) with job growth likely to occur in the next three to six months. Just in time for Republicans to 'claim' that the election results helped to bring it about.

We are an emotion filled people and tend to make whoever is in power the whipping boy or praise them regardless of them being anything other than in the right place at the right time. Let us from this day forward no longer allow simple emotions to rule our vote. Let us be calm, collected, and reasoning as we approach the ballot box. Let us not allow politicians to simply take credit or lay blame on them when neither is deserved.

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