Reporter's Note: President Barack Obama is busy chatting up the Russians about, among other things, nuclear arms reductions. I thought we had worked all that out years ago. Go figure. Anyway, assuming his staff will forward my letters, I continue writing a missive a day to the house on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Tom Foreman | Bio
AC360° Correspondent
Dear Mr. President,
Everyone is scurrying around like eBay’ers chasing down Michael Jackson tickets trying to suss out precisely why Sarah Palin is quitting her Governor’s gig. With almost as much urgency, critics are slamming her for walking out of her job, calling it irresponsible, reckless, and a betrayal of the voters. Well, as they say in Alaska, “Hold on Joe Juneau!” (Actually, they probably don’t say that, but they could…)
Maybe they have a point, but for the DC crowd to scream dereliction of duty over this jump from the seaplane seems like hypocrisy with a great big red H. Where were all of these people during the last presidential race? Both parties have never hesitated a nanosecond to push active governors, senators, and member of Congress to run for higher office year after year, and yet neither party seems to contemplate that those candidates are giving their current jobs short shrift in the process. Voters, no doubt, would be better off if those folks did resign and hand their offices over to full-time public servants.
The election calendar has grown longer and longer, the demands of the campaign trail more and more time consuming. You ran for president; you know all this better than most! As often as I saw you and your opponents on the trail, it is simply beyond ridiculous to think that any of you were tending to the offices you already held with the same energy and attention that you would have if you were not campaigning. (And frankly, if you political types can spend that much time away from the office and it doesn’t make a difference, maybe we’re overpaying you.) Yet both parties turn a blind eye to that behavior.
Here is a radical suggestion: You are president. Why not put forward legislation requiring all elected officials to serve out their term of office, or be red-shirted for five years? In other words, if you make a pledge to voters to take a job (and after all, what else is a campaign?) you must complete that job, every day of it, before you can seek another.
I don’t know of any civilian job that would allow a person to actively go on interviews for the next job week after week, month after month, without the boss calling you in to say “We’ve got to talk…” And yet political types consider it fully acceptable.
This isn’t about the increasingly odd story of the Governor of Alaska. This is about public service, and what could be effectively called public fraud; because that’s what we, the voters, are handed every time we elect someone only to find that he or she is just using our faith and our public offices as a stepping stone to higher personal glory before getting the first job done.
Not meaning to step on toes, so call if you want to chew this one over. But seriously…
Regards,
Tom
| Susan, Calif |
July 7th, 2009 11:05 am ET Thank you. |
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| Donna Wood, Lil' Tennessee |
July 7th, 2009 11:50 am ET In my career choice quitting would be considered abandoning my patient. I'm pretty sure I could get into lots of trouble for that one! Isn't that somewhere along the lines of what Ms. Palin did? I mean let's not mince words here, that's abandonment right? Donna Wood |
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| Joker |
July 7th, 2009 12:46 pm ET I agree with your assessment Tom. The problem with this is, Palin is quitting, period! She can't get what she wants with the twirl of a wand so she is deserting her state. She's a bimbo and the less I hear from her the better. |
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| Tishila, NJ |
July 7th, 2009 3:24 pm ET Here's a novel idea - let's just take what people say at face value and stop this ridiculous waste of energy theorizing what they really meant. In time we will know more. Sort of like innocent until proven otherwise. |
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| William Courtland |
July 7th, 2009 4:20 pm ET When the parties are in control... they truly have asserted that assumption. When the all might advertising dollar is required to give the people an understanding of who a candidate is... yet to require advertising... is to elect the party: while those candidates which need no such introduction are those candidates who should truly win. Example: should Walt Disney ever wanted to run for office: or a successful governor... or a business tycoon who can use a company name to fill in for his or her own: hey he Started a little company called Bell and invented this phone thing which works with telegraph lines only it transmits your voice he is running as Vice President for this other guy: he invented this light bulb thingy... I question if news media is not paid off to only cover those candidates of top party billing... but then I also understand that an independent must somehow run under the Democratic ticket: so much for the hand written ballot system... The party: it seems required to stall and stalemate the opportunity of others: so makes a house ever stuck in historically undersized management methods: the party will only manage to assume control if it can manage to impede un-expected growth and splitting of new Districts: as jerrymandering is a threat to the party: for them: it is best never accomplished: so they sit in the same house they had over one hundred and fifty years ago... Now they haven't even added additions since then: so imagine if you had your entire family living with you in one homestead: holding all your seventh cousins in a house which never got bigger than what that eighth generational father built for his family... Instead the party just started aborting the kids. |
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| Annie Kate |
July 7th, 2009 6:45 pm ET I agree with you Tom but man! you are taking it a little close to home since this is more or less what Obama did. I think its an excellent idea but I don't question that we are paying Congress too much – look at all the time taken out for campaigning in the last few years but the government ran on without them at their posts. Which makes me wonder if we even need them at all..... |
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| RLWellman |
July 7th, 2009 7:27 pm ET If Palin is a bimbo, what does that make Obama? He quit his senator job, remember? He quit on the people of Chicago! Again CNN, is this all the news you have is Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson? The Government is spending more money than any other time in history and all you can report on is a dead guy and a nominee for VP that lost the race. |
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| Lampe |
July 7th, 2009 7:30 pm ET Tom: I would have been more impressed in your letter to Obama, if you had asked him why he QUIT, and still took a pay for a jb he wasn't doing. Of course I guess that is too much to ask, being that you are an Obama supporter, and don't want to muddy his waters. |
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| Lisa Blue |
July 8th, 2009 12:53 am ET Iam from Jersey city ,NJ and would like to ask the president why is rent so high for people who do not make enough money . I can not say Iam even in the area of middle-class Iam at the bottom and sinking, i have no health benefits and get even get a full time position at my job, I gave my daughter and grandson my section 8 cause I know it wil be hard for her to pay rent leaving myself short of money and food . but know one feels my pain. |
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