"As the days fly past, will we lose our grasp or fuse it with the sun?"

While not at all surprising, based on your flavor of media, the Republican victories could be a revolutionary turning point in U.S. politics.  Which is really just a reversal of a revolutionary turning point 2 years ago, and 2 years before that, and so on...

So one is prompted to ask?  Just how fickle is the American electorate?

Perhaps this latest coup is not so much a "call for change", a rebuke of Obama's administration, and a stick in the eye of big government or big bureaucracy.  Perhaps, we are embracing the political age of attention deficit disorder.  Do you like Ice Cream?  I digress.

The electorate seems to have abandoned a sense of "dyed in the wool" party allegiance.  We are fair weather voters, with a need for speed.  We want our political solutions as quickly as we want our Venti latte.  Waiting on line will not be tolerated.  That is not what our Founding Fathers envision when they wrote the Constitution.  Why do you think they're signatures were so sloppy?  They had things to do, Federal agencies to Federalize, states to form, treaties to make, and then break, and then make again.  They didn't want to wait around for weeks in Philadelphia waiting for democratic solutions to percolate and then rise out of discussion like some phoenix.

And we don't want to wait either for substantive change to evolve and address substantive problems.  We have no issue letting a crisis form with the alacrity of a glacier.  But when it comes to solutions, we expect them immediately, still piping hot and portable.  And perhaps all of this speaks to a need to be heard.  The electorate must be heard.  But how we determine and measure acknowledgement and response is still under evolution. 

We're a people on the move.  We like fast internet, fast food and fast politics.    If we can download over favorite 80s single from iTunes in 30 seconds, we should be able to see the upside of a stimulus or jobs bill by lunchtime.  End of day at the latest.  Our political leaders must work harder to keep our focus and attention.  And if the channels we're watching stops looking like a "Worlds Must Dangerous Drivers on Crystal Meth" and more like a Front-line special on the disenfranchisement of South American Penguins...we change the channel.  We unite under something more flashy and tantalizing.  Substance is of no importance to us.  Substance is for intellectual, policy wonks.  Ultimate success is not important to us either.  We're not interested in the long term gains, like a savings account.  We want the quick return, the rush, the high that comes from "never worrying about paying or how much [one] owes."   That's American dam nit.  Or at least an American ad for a Ford F-150.

So now we get to watch something new.  Something excited.  Maybe it will be like the Jerseyshore meets Lie to Me.  Orange people, against a truculent intellectual, too smart to appeal to the masses.  But of course, we run the risk that in short order we might bored with that.   And require another sea-change.  Perhaps we need many, many political parties.  That seems to work for Italy.

 In the meantime, the Democrats will humbly reach across the aisle and wait for the Republicans to stop gloating.  If they want to make it interesting the Democrats should gloat and the Republican should come humble.   But alas, in all likelihood the he democratic fist bump of cooperation could be left hanging as the Republicans bask in the glory.  And they have much to crow about, having evolved from a critical minority who offered no substantive alternative, to the majority.  Of course now they've got to stop hiding behind rhetoric and actually lead.   Who knows, perhaps their reputations for humility and humanity will help inspire them to get something done.

 But let's hope that this is not another wasted exercise of parries, dodges and lack of substantive change.   Of all the entertainment we can be fickle about.  Politics as blood sport is not entertaining when the viewers are bleeding more than the participants.  And hopefully we've lost the appetite for that.


Now I've got to get on a conference call with Obama.