LETTER: Americans must be less partisan

Republicans won convincingly in Massachusetts.

Maybe. Let's be realistic and take a cold, hard look beneath the surface here. The results in the Massachusetts senate race were not so much a critique of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party as a scatter-gun indictment against the status quo and Washington politics in general. Everyone is tired of feeling disenfranchised and having no say in Washington, and it coalesced in this election.

So before the GOP gets too giddy and anoints Scott Brown as the fresh face of the party and a presidential favorite for 2012, we should realize that if Attila the Hun (nationality issues aside) had been running against the Democrat, who was perceived as the incumbent in Massachusetts, he would have won handily. Make no mistake, Brown is not your daddy's conservative; he's a pro-choice centrist, and until very recently, an obscure state politician. He checked the polls and said what everyone wanted to hear. The election results were more about voting against an uninformed, half-hearted, arrogant and entitled Martha Coakley than voting for the Republican candidate.

This is not the first vote against the powers-that-be. That happened a year ago November when an upstart named Barack Obama won the highest office in the land. Now, many people seem to have fuzzy short-term memories. Let's remember that before President Obama was elected, the economy was in the toilet careening toward depression and chaos. He inherited an unparalleled mess from his predecessor and Congress (of which, he was a member). Our problems were and are so mind-bogglingly complex, mistakes were inevitable, and since hindsight is 20/20, everyone can now point a finger and say "I told you so." But we're still here.

There is a bigger picture here and we all need to see it. We're fed up with a Congress more interested in power, self-preservation and feathering their own nests than in fixing our problems. They are quite content to blame the president, when it is they who make and pass the laws. We must hold these guys accountable, and Massachusetts is a good start.

If Congress won't, we can impose our own term-limits. But until Americans (and by extension, Congress) can be less partisan and more pragmatic with their voting, more constructive and less obstructionist in their ideas, we're destined to flail around in the political slop and nothing will change. And until people can see past their Republican and Democrat noses that Massachusetts can, by example, be a good thing for us all, all they're doing is cursing the darkness, not lighting a candle.

c

Aiken