CDZ Can Washington Be Fixed from the Inside?

[Elvis Obama]

Barack Obama, in his 2012 re-election campaign, stated that his biggest failure to date was was not fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to address Washington's dysfunctional culture.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Agree? Disagree?

If you agree, can it be fixed from the outside? If so, how?

 

[Asclepias]

Agree. There is no way to "fix it" from inside. The rules are set up so thats not possible.

I think he was overly optimistic about the number of white racists being ok with him being a Black POTUS.

 

[Auld Phart]

 

[TNHarley]

It will have to come from us

 

[imawhosure]

Barack Obama, in his 2012 re-election campaign, stated that his biggest failure to date was was not fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to address Washington's dysfunctional culture.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Agree? Disagree?

If you agree, can it be fixed from the outside? If so, how?

It will take a President that has 2 things.........
1. Disdain for the political class who screws regular Americans, and 2........

2. The ability to not make his/her re-election the number 1 priority.

People don't like change for the most part, which is why Washington changes things slooooooooowly. But, a President won't be able to do that if he wants to do the constitutional thing. He will have to dismantle many of Washingtons ingrained departments where both parties, hide their cronies. Like the EPA, Dept of ED, Labor, etc.

They need to be dismantled, and dismantled this time around or this country will never change course, until something so bad happens, it will have to.

 

[320 Years of History]

Barack Obama, in his 2012 re-election campaign, stated that his biggest failure to date was was not fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to address Washington's dysfunctional culture.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Agree? Disagree?

If you agree, can it be fixed from the outside? If so, how?

Effecting change from within:
Well, seeing as one part of my job is to effect change, I am certain that any organization can be "fixed" from within or without. The thing is that it takes an empowered coalition of individuals of stellar intellect, high objectivity, irreproachable ethics, balanced self-confidence, excellent communication skills, excellent inspirational skills, and a willingness to put themselves at risk -- be it their position, power, wealth, reputation, all of those, some of those, etc. -- to effect change from within. That combination of individuals imbued with such traits and skills is very hard to come by. Moreover, it's equally hard to come by their peers and supporters who have the prudence to see the change is necessary and who will in turn accord the authority needed to allow "the coalition" to design, validate and implement the changes.

When the U.S. was founded, such a coalition was obtained. What made it possible to do so was the size of the the country and the number of people involved in forming the nation. Distance and numbers made it possible for the individuals charged with effecting the change to personally know one another and thereby come to trust them. The same was so for the business leaders -- essentially other wealthy landowners -- who supported the politicians whose names you and I now see on our founding documents.

It wasn't that those men were all that different from men now, although in some ways they were. For example, then politics wasn't seen as a career but rather as a duty. That's not surprising for the men in question were often in the prime earning period of their lives. They took office to serve for a while, the reality of their lives was that they needed to get back to their business and farms to generate income. They couldn't be federal politicians indefinitely because it just cost too much to do so. When one recalls the role the land and environment played in the lives of colonial leaders, most of whom were farmers even if only to sustain their own households, it's all the more clear that serving in office was not what they really wanted to do for decades on end.

These days, we certainly have plenty of bright individuals holding federally elected office, and IMO that applies to the ones with whom I agree politically and to those with whom I disagree. The main difficulty these days is that even though we have plenty of smart folks in the House and Senate, along with in the Executive branch, (including, despite the frequent "he's an idiot" remarks seen on this forum, Mr. Obama) the population is too damn big for the electorate to develop any real sense of trust in its elected leaders.

Trust is something that is earned only by showing one's true self to others, and that takes time; it requires more than an appearance at a stump speech, or a few minutes at a political fundraiser. In a nation as large and dispersed as ours, it's just not possible, for a variety of reasons, for leaders to be that transparent to most of their voters. Furthermore, holding political office has become an end, a career, in and of itself.

Power's sway is a big problem because it is intoxicating, and it's a problem because our nation is now so much more diverse than it was in the 17th through 19th centuries, yet human nature is no different now than it was 5K years ago. The simple fact is that most folks have no real basis for trusting their leaders. Sure, we give them our votes, but rarely do we give them, and the folks who elected them, the benefit of the doubt.

Why? Because we don't know those people, and very few among us really understand human nature, yet all of us have experience with at least one human subverting human nature and using it to manipulate or abuse others. Additionally, in the corporate world, executives engage consultants to help them catalyze change. A company's stakeholders necessarily will trust their bosses, and if they don't they can leave, whereas few Americans want to yield their citizenship. The thing is that no government official has the kind of (near) absolute power, and nowhere near the degree of implied and actual trust from those they lead, that a company president or CEO has in their organization, and barring a Constitutional amendment, nobody is ever going to.

Taken with the considerable ease with which one can make choices based on gut instinct rather than rational investigation, circumstances today make it highly unlikely that anyone (or group) inside the government is going to fix anything. Moreover, it's unlikely that the electorate trusts any of them to do so. More likely is that change can be effected from within, but that change will merely result in a new paradigm that is just different, not better, much as happens when power shifts from one party to the other.

Side note:

For readers who for some reason infer that by identifying diversity as a problem I also think it's one that needs to be fixed/changed...I'm not remotely intimating that the nation and/or its population should be less diverse. The great diversity among us is a problem in the sense that it makes it very hard for leaders' to become well known and understood by most citizens. Diversity, in an of itself, is not something I see as a problem.​

End of side note.

Effecting change from without:
Sure as it's unlikely that we can obtain change effected from within. It's basically impossible for it to happen from outside the government. Why? Because for as improbable as it be that someone (or a group) in the government is going to be given the authority to effect the needed changes, it's certain that nobody (or a group) outside the government will ever be given that level of authority.

The government is not a huge corporation. A corporation's board can replace the CEO (or temporarily subordinate her/him to a panel charged with effecting the "fixes"), bring a new one from outside, someone who lacks company "cultural baggage," and make change happen. That just can't happen, at least not right now, given the way we have organized our government.

So how do we "fix" things?
Having written the preceding, I do think it's conceivable that we can fix a lot, if not everything, that's wrong, but to do so, we first have to identify what is wrong. When it comes to government, what's wrong is the way the political process functions (some may say fails to function). We voters have demonstrated by our voting patterns that we want politicians who tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. We have shown that for them to obtain our votes, they must pander to us.

Believe it or not, even though many citizens may feel as though they don't have any real and great political power, the U.S. is indeed a nation of and by the people. In order to change the political process, in order to change the way the government works, we, the people, need to change ourselves. The government and its officials will change in turn.

 

[Asclepias]

Barack Obama, in his 2012 re-election campaign, stated that his biggest failure to date was was not fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to address Washington's dysfunctional culture.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Agree? Disagree?

If you agree, can it be fixed from the outside? If so, how?

Effecting change from within:
Well, seeing as one part of my job is to effect change, I am certain that any organization can be "fixed" from within or without. The thing is that it takes an empowered coalition of individuals of stellar intellect, high objectivity, irreproachable ethics, balanced self-confidence, excellent communication skills, excellent inspirational skills, and a willingness to put themselves at risk -- be it their position, power, wealth, reputation, all of those, some of those, etc. -- to effect change from within. That combination of individuals imbued with such traits and skills is very hard to come by. Moreover, it's equally hard to come by their peers and supporters who have the prudence to see the change is necessary and who will in turn accord the authority needed to allow "the coalition" to design, validate and implement the changes.

When the U.S. was founded, such a coalition was obtained. What made it possible to do so was the size of the the country and the number of people involved in forming the nation. Distance and numbers made it possible for the individuals charged with effecting the change to personally know one another and thereby come to trust them. The same was so for the business leaders -- essentially other wealthy landowners -- who supported the politicians whose names you and I now see on our founding documents.

It wasn't that those men were all that different from men now, although in some ways they were. For example, then politics wasn't seen as a career but rather as a duty. That's not surprising for the men in question were often in the prime earning period of their lives. They took office to serve for a while, the reality of their lives was that they needed to get back to their business and farms to generate income. They couldn't be federal politicians indefinitely because it just cost too much to do so. When one recalls the role the land and environment played in the lives of colonial leaders, most of whom were farmers even if only to sustain their own households, it's all the more clear that serving in office was not what they really wanted to do for decades on end.

These days, we certainly have plenty of bright individuals holding federally elected office, and IMO that applies to the ones with whom I agree politically and to those with whom I disagree. The main difficulty these days is that even though we have plenty of smart folks in the House and Senate, along with in the Executive branch, (including, despite the frequent "he's an idiot" remarks seen on this forum, Mr. Obama) the population is too damn big for the electorate to develop any real sense of trust in its elected leaders.

Trust is something that is earned only by showing one's true self to others, and that takes time; it requires more than an appearance at a stump speech, or a few minutes at a political fundraiser. In a nation as large and dispersed as ours, it's just not possible, for a variety of reasons, for leaders to be that transparent to most of their voters. Furthermore, holding political office has become an end, a career, in and of itself.

Power's sway is a big problem because it is intoxicating, and it's a problem because our nation is now so much more diverse than it was in the 17th through 19th centuries, yet human nature is no different now than it was 5K years ago. The simple fact is that most folks have no real basis for trusting their leaders. Sure, we give them our votes, but rarely do we give them, and the folks who elected them, the benefit of the doubt.

Why? Because we don't know those people, and very few among us really understand human nature, yet all of us have experience with at least one human subverting human nature and using it to manipulate or abuse others. Additionally, in the corporate world, executives engage consultants to help them catalyze change. A company's stakeholders necessarily will trust their bosses, and if they don't they can leave, whereas few Americans want to yield their citizenship. The thing is that no government official has the kind of (near) absolute power, and nowhere near the degree of implied and actual trust from those they lead, that a company president or CEO has in their organization, and barring a Constitutional amendment, nobody is ever going to.

Taken with the considerable ease with which one can make choices based on gut instinct rather than rational investigation, circumstances today make it highly unlikely that anyone (or group) inside the government is going to fix anything. Moreover, it's unlikely that the electorate trusts any of them to do so. More likely is that change can be effected from within, but that change will merely result in a new paradigm that is just different, not better, much as happens when power shifts from one party to the other.

Side note:

For readers who for some reason infer that by identifying diversity as a problem I also think it's one that needs to be fixed/changed...I'm not remotely intimating that the nation and/or its population should be less diverse. The great diversity among us is a problem in the sense that it makes it very hard for leaders' to become well known and understood by most citizens. Diversity, in an of itself, is not something I see as a problem.​

End of side note.

Effecting change from without:
Sure as it's unlikely that we can obtain change effected from within. It's basically impossible for it to happen from outside the government. Why? Because for as improbable as it be that someone (or a group) in the government is going to be given the authority to effect the needed changes, it's certain that nobody (or a group) outside the government will ever be given that level of authority.

The government is not a huge corporation. A corporation's board can replace the CEO (or temporarily subordinate her/him to a panel charged with effecting the "fixes"), bring a new one from outside, someone who lacks company "cultural baggage," and make change happen. That just can't happen, at least not right now, given the way we have organized our government.

So how do we "fix" things?
Having written the preceding, I do think it's conceivable that we can fix a lot, if not everything, that's wrong, but to do so, we first have to identify what is wrong. When it comes to government, what's wrong is the way the political process functions (some may say fails to function). We voters have demonstrated by our voting patterns that we want politicians who tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. We have shown that for them to obtain our votes, they must pander to us.

Believe it or not, even though many citizens may feel as though they don't have any real and great political power, the U.S. is indeed a nation of and by the people. In order to change the political process, in order to change the way the government works, we, the people, need to change ourselves. The government and its officials will change in turn.

" irreproachable ethics"

These are the same guys that had a chance to do away with slavery but chose to make it an acceptable practice and the law of the land. This country was founded for white people. There should be zero illusions about that. Based on that fact the people will never get what they want from within.

 

[the_human_being]

 

[ScienceRocks]

What do you want to fix? Cutting our funding for infrastructure and tarring down our science institutions are what is called destroying.

If you want to fix something you can start with fixing our unfair trade policies and reforming education. Of course, that would mean that you'd have to stop being anti-government.

 

[baileyn45]

Personally I don't think washington, and by washington I'm taking for granted we're talking the fed govt, can be changed from within or without. It's become it's own entity completely separate from the people. The only way to fix the "alphabet soup from hell". is to tear it down and start over.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Personally I don't think washington, and by washington I'm taking for granted we're talking the fed govt, can be changed from within or without. It's become it's own entity completely separate from the people. The only way to fix the "alphabet soup from hell". is to tear it down and start over.

Why? We tar something down that does at least 80% of what is needed to be a first world country?

 

[320 Years of History]

" irreproachable ethics"

These are the same guys that had a chance to do away with slavery but chose to make it an acceptable practice and the law of the land. This country was founded for white people. There should be zero illusions about that. Based on that fact the people will never get what they want from within.

Well, to be fair, I didn't suggest that irreproachable ethics were found among the founders. I wrote that, "What made it possible to do so was the size of the the country and the number of people involved in forming the nation."

FWIW, and to give a sense of what that entailed, in 1789, the nation had about 4 million people (white, natives, and blacks) in it, and the only ones among them who mattered (because they could vote) were male landowners, who comprised about 93% of white men at the time. So when thinking about the men who represented the various soon-to-be states before the Constitution was ratified, it wasn't at all difficult or uncommon for all the white male landowners in the state to know one another, and thus trust (or not) their representative to "do the right thing."

With all due respect, I think the pessimism you express in your final sentence above is among the key things that can ensure corrections don't happen. I infer from that statement that you have little trust of the folks in the government, and I realize they've not earned it from you. To the extent citizens lack trust in their political leaders, they need to make it clear that they do and act, more than answering a mailed/in person poll or posting in an Internet forum, to show as much.

 

[Picaro]

Barack Obama, in his 2012 re-election campaign, stated that his biggest failure to date was was not fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to address Washington's dysfunctional culture.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Agree? Disagree?

If you agree, can it be fixed from the outside? If so, how?

Washington is a reflection of the American people and our collective values; it isn't some artificial alien body grafted onto us against our collective 'will'. Nobody actually wants to 'fix' it in a real sense, they just want it to cater to their particular faction and ideology, that's all. Washington isn't the part that needs 'fixing'; it isn't the cause of whatever ' the problem' is. Obviously people like things just the way they are, it's just 'those other people' that need fixing.

 

[Picaro]

" irreproachable ethics"

These are the same guys that had a chance to do away with slavery but chose to make it an acceptable practice and the law of the land. This country was founded for white people. There should be zero illusions about that. Based on that fact the people will never get what they want from within.

Yes, white people are the problem. We need to kill whitey. the world was all sweetness and light until those white people came along and screwed it all up. Black people have always done better; see Africa for proof of that, and if we kill all the white people and put only black people in charge of everything, all evil, corruption, and bigotry would disappear, just like it has in Africa, and during Reconstruction here.

Here's an example of how blacks would have created a vast improvement over everybody else:

Another weak seam in the Republican fabric joined predominately mulatto antebellum free Negroes and the largely black ex-slaves.

In Louisiana and N. Carolina, the early monopolization of black leadership by the mulatto class aroused the color and class tensions never far from the surface in the black community.

A mulatto candidate for the 1868 constitutional convention in South Carolina said: “ If ever there is a ****** government – an unmixed ****** government – established in South Carolina, I shall move.”

On the other side, a black leader said of the mulattoes: “To what race do they belong? … I know that my ancestors trod the burning sands of Africa, but why should men in whose veins run a great preponderance of white blood seek to specially ally themselves with the black man, prate of 'our race', when they are simply mongrels.”

p.560, Ordeal By Fire – The Civil War and Reconstruction - James McPherson, Knopf, 1982.

Oops ... looks like the same old thing, different day ... never mind.

 

[baileyn45]

Personally I don't think washington, and by washington I'm taking for granted we're talking the fed govt, can be changed from within or without. It's become it's own entity completely separate from the people. The only way to fix the "alphabet soup from hell". is to tear it down and start over.

Why? We tar something down that does at least 80% of what is needed to be a first world country?

Unfortunately they suck at most of it. I agree we need good govt, that's why we need to tear it down and start over.

The fourth branch of govt, bureaucracy, is impervious to change and more and more impervious to oversight. People think that laws and regulations are always reviewed by elected officials. Bureaucracies expand and issue new edicts on a daily basis making it utterly impossible that elected officials (our representation) ever even see a small fraction of them.

I mean look at the ACA, it was something like 138 new agencies, depts, offices, bureaus and so on. Each more than likely will be seeking to expand its influence constantly, forever. Keep adding this stuff day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, and you end up with the monstrosity that is the fed govt.

The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and there are 5 million hands.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Barack Obama, in his 2012 re-election campaign, stated that his biggest failure to date was was not fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to address Washington's dysfunctional culture.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Agree? Disagree?

If you agree, can it be fixed from the outside? If so, how?

obama never had any intention of fixing DC. If he tried he never would have been re-elected, hell, if he actually wanted to, he never would have made it.

remember "drain the swamp"? How long did that last? Until the first dems got caught fucking around.


but yea, he's right, we can only fix DC from the outside and only by killing every pol that lives there and replacing them with people who will support and defend the Constitution or be executed.

 

[Ringel05]

Can Washington Be Fixed from the Inside?

A limited nuclear device.........?

 

[Asclepias]

" irreproachable ethics"

These are the same guys that had a chance to do away with slavery but chose to make it an acceptable practice and the law of the land. This country was founded for white people. There should be zero illusions about that. Based on that fact the people will never get what they want from within.

Yes, white people are the problem. We need to kill whitey. the world was all sweetness and light until those white people came along and screwed it all up. Black people have always done better; see Africa for proof of that, and if we kill all the white people and put only black people in charge of everything, all evil, corruption, and bigotry would disappear, just like it has in Africa, and during Reconstruction here.

Here's an example of how blacks would have created a vast improvement over everybody else:

Another weak seam in the Republican fabric joined predominately mulatto antebellum free Negroes and the largely black ex-slaves.

In Louisiana and N. Carolina, the early monopolization of black leadership by the mulatto class aroused the color and class tensions never far from the surface in the black community.

A mulatto candidate for the 1868 constitutional convention in South Carolina said: “ If ever there is a ****** government – an unmixed ****** government – established in South Carolina, I shall move.”

On the other side, a black leader said of the mulattoes: “To what race do they belong? … I know that my ancestors trod the burning sands of Africa, but why should men in whose veins run a great preponderance of white blood seek to specially ally themselves with the black man, prate of 'our race', when they are simply mongrels.”

p.560, Ordeal By Fire – The Civil War and Reconstruction - James McPherson, Knopf, 1982.

Oops ... looks like the same old thing, different day ... never mind.

Actually here are several better examples of non white civilizations all of which taught whites to be civilized.

Mali Empire

Egyptian Empire

Chinese Empires

Indian Empires

Native American Confederations.

 

[Asclepias]

" irreproachable ethics"

These are the same guys that had a chance to do away with slavery but chose to make it an acceptable practice and the law of the land. This country was founded for white people. There should be zero illusions about that. Based on that fact the people will never get what they want from within.

Well, to be fair, I didn't suggest that irreproachable ethics were found among the founders. I wrote that, "What made it possible to do so was the size of the the country and the number of people involved in forming the nation."

FWIW, and to give a sense of what that entailed, in 1789, the nation had about 4 million people (white, natives, and blacks) in it, and the only ones among them who mattered (because they could vote) were male landowners, who comprised about 93% of white men at the time. So when thinking about the men who represented the various soon-to-be states before the Constitution was ratified, it wasn't at all difficult or uncommon for all the white male landowners in the state to know one another, and thus trust (or not) their representative to "do the right thing."

With all due respect, I think the pessimism you express in your final sentence above is among the key things that can ensure corrections don't happen. I infer from that statement that you have little trust of the folks in the government, and I realize they've not earned it from you. To the extent citizens lack trust in their political leaders, they need to make it clear that they do and act, more than answering a mailed/in person poll or posting in an Internet forum, to show as much.

I must have misunderstood the part where you said when the country was founded such a coalition was obtained. I mistook that to mean the people that founded it exemplified those traits. My apologies.

Correct. My pessimism would indeed make it a certainty that no change from within would ever work if I was actually a factor in making that change from within. The length of time needed to turn around the voting process and changing the populace into thinkers instead of sheep appears daunting, time consuming, and frankly impossible. The strength of the grip used by the movers and shakers in government on the minds of the american people has been steadily increasing for centuries. It would probably take centuries to turn around from within.

 

[320 Years of History]

I must have misunderstood the part where you said when the country was founded such a coalition was obtained. I mistook that to mean the people that founded it exemplified those traits. My apologies.

Correct. My pessimism would indeed make it a certainty that that no change from withing would ever work if I was actually a factor in making that change from within. The length of time needed to turn around the voting process and changing the populace into thinkers instead of sheep appears daunting, time consuming, and frankly impossible. The strength of the grip used by the movers and shakers in government on the minds of the american people has been steadily increasing for centuries. It would probably take centuries to turn around from within.

No, you didn't misunderstand. I presented my idea ambiguously.

I think that the people (the ones who mattered) of the day, because they knew them, viewed their leaders as having those qualities and thus trusted the founders whose names we see on the Declaration and Constitution to act on their behalf. Whether each man had all the noted traits, I don't know. I don't even think each of them needed them. So long as the right man had the right trait appropriate to his role in forming the country, success was still achievable.

That is actually still possible to day, but I seriously doubt that today the electorate is going to come to have the levels of trust colonials had in those 30 odd men. After all, it's quite a lot to entrust others with the task of forming, and then subsequently managing the legal and political systems under which one and one's descendents will live. There must be unique men and unique circumstances in place for that to happen.

Red:
That's probably true. It's also true that it won't happen any sooner if we delay getting started on the process of doing so. I don't think that I will live to see the changes come to fruition, but that's okay. I'd sooner get started on it than not start at all.

Think of it like this. When one works and realizes great fortune, at some point, it's clear that one has built one large enough that one will never again want for money. At that point, any greater fortune one amasses must necessarily be for others, perhaps one's children and their children and so on, perhaps for unrelated individuals. Regardless of the beneficiaries, one knows that one will never spend all that money, so the thought in one's mind is by leaving a great fortune behind, someone among the beneficiaries will do something meaningful with it, although what that "something" be, one will never know. The same principle -- hope that one will have made possible the creation of something greater than that which exists in one's own time -- is in play when it comes to "fixing" the political process.