I changed the channel

January 28, 2012

For the first time in years I didn’t watch the President’s State of the Union address. 

I tuned in for about two minutes of the speech.  My son snuggled up next to me and begged to watch something else.  I took a deep breath, ready to argue that Mom doesn’t watch TV too often, but tonight is a special night. 

The President had just finished a much deserved thank you to the men and women of the military for their service.

Then he said: “They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.”

His point was that he and his colleagues in office should learn from our courageous veterans – to be less obsessed with power and more focused on positive change.

Watching the President approach the podium, listening to him talk, watching Congress’s reaction, it all seemed like a carefully staged theatrical performance by veteran ‘reality’ TV stars, as real as Kim Kardashian’s wedding.

I changed the channel to Cartoon Network.  We watched a show about a kid and his talking dog who planted three magic beans.  

Each bean produced a giant beanstalk, from which sprouted evil baby pigs dressed as the Village People, magic wands whose rainbow sparkles cast a dancing spell, and a pod full of regenerating ice cream. 

Turns out, if you shot the pigs with the ice cream, they would explode in a poof of butterflies and flowers.

I decided that this was more realistic than the idea that anyone in Washington would not be consumed with personal ambition, obsessed over differences, and work together on the mission at hand.

I’ve since read the President’s address online.  Whether I agree with him or not is beside the point.  It all just seems like empty talk to me.  

All the pretty talk in the world doesn’t change the fact that they aren’t willing stop bickering and take the same cuts that most of America has been plagued with over the last few years.

I am by nature a hopeful person. I want to believe that, as the President said, “We can do this. I know we can, because we’ve done it before.”

He then discussed our nation’s optimism after World War II, our recovery from depression and the threat of fascism.

He said that his grandparents, “…understood they were part of something larger; that they were contributing to a story of success that every American had a chance to share – the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.”   

The average American understands they are part of something larger. Most of us are willing to work hard and do what it takes to pull our country back together. 

It is those in Washington who continue to give themselves pay raises and dodge their taxes who are missing the bigger picture. 

Unfortunately, I am more optimistic that evil baby pigs casting dancing spells could be defeated by a giant bean pod full of ice cream than I am that our elected officials will make the sacrifices necessary to fix the mess that they created.

This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on January 28, 2012.