Promises Aside, Election Isn’t a One-Man Show

Give politicians credit; they have our number. They know few, if any, remember what they learned in civics class about government.
In a way, it was refreshing to listen to Constitution Party Congressional candidate Peter Boyce speak at the Oct. 21 League of Women Voters Candidates Forum at Middle Township Performing Arts Center in defense of that ancient document that supposedly is the guts of government.
His delivery was like that of a no-nonsense school principal, but his words resonated about that thing which people, like congressional representatives, are sworn to uphold, but most do not.
The barrage of mindless advertising of both major parties in the presidential campaign uses sound bites to great advantage, and makes each candidate seem like a dictator.
A dictator because they portray to us what they, and they alone, will do if elected.
They will do this or that. Raise taxes for the rich, lower taxes for the poor, make health insurance affordable for everyone, and maybe, just maybe, find a cure for the common cold.
Wait, just one minute. Has someone mindlessly done away with the other two branches of government? Since when can one person decree taxes will go up or down? Don’t they have to have a majority of Congress behind them in order to do such a trick?
Why doesn’t someone ask President Bush how much power one man had in getting Congress to pass the Wall Street bailout?
When Congress, as our district Representative Frank LoBiondo said, acts quickly on anything, it has a tendency to screw things up. He voted against the bailout, and he told why at the forum. His reasons were valid, even though they were against his own party’s President.
Right there was proof that all slick advertising, regardless who “approved this message,” equals zero. When the time of testing comes, it is Congress, which holds the purse strings, as it is directed to do in the Constitution. One person, the president, may wish to impose one thing, but the members of Congress will often, and rightly so, have different opinions.
It is no different at the local level.
I have read far too many anonymous complaints about local mayors who have raised taxes, done other things, real, or imagined by the complainers.
Even in my home municipality of Middle Township, there are three members on township committee. While all are the same political party, at this time, there must be at least two votes to make something pass. More people on committee, say five, would be better, but regardless, the idea is the same, no mayor or committee member has the power to impose, single handedly, a tax hike or spend the public trough into bankruptcy.
Ah, yes. Politicians are wise in the ways of the world. They know the public is short minded. As what the local municipal budget was to operate this, year and 99 percent of townspeople will have no idea.
Many of them have just a passing idea of who their elected representatives are. Some may think that Ernie Troiano is mayor of Middle Township, or that Sen. Jeff Van Drew is still a freeholder.
Of course, not everyone is dim witted when it comes to government, but they are the exception.
Want more proof? In the election that will take place next Tuesday, what are the real, true issues upon which the candidates are running?
Can the average voter recite them? No?
Isn’t that strange?
Could that possibly be because fewer and fewer people participate in their local government? Could it be they have no time to spend chiding their elected officials into attending to matters of “public” importance, not things that just fit a politician’s agenda for today?
Sure, taxes are a bigger target than the USS New Jersey, but what are some of the other bread and butter issues that no one has addressed?
What about a real, true, dedicated fund for beach replenishment and back bay dredging?
If we are to play the tourism game, to win, we must have beaches and we must have navigable waterways behind the islands.
Who has said word one about such stuff?
When will the Garden State Parkway overpasses in Middle Township be built?
Has anyone raised that question this political season? People continue to be hurt and killed at those three intersections, yet all we hear is more talk.
One slogan from a past election keeps surfacing in my mind, “A choice, not an echo.”
It’s a safe bet even in today’s polls, (I forgot who spewed that one out,) but at least there was a ray of hope in it, slim though it may have been.
Elect me! I’ll bring down gas prices and give away free cheese steaks to every worker in Cape May County. I’ll lower your taxes and drop you down three pants sizes in just six weeks. Vote for me, and I’ll give you 50 weeks vacation a year and free sun tan lotion.
Nonsense, you say? You are correct. So is all the blather we’ve heard to persuade us to vote for candidate A or B.
Break open a dusty civics book. Better still, get a copy of the Constitution and see how the nation is supposed to operate.
I know you won’t, and so do all those politicians and their advisers who hope they can keep us in the dark long enough to pull the wool over our eyes.
“A choice, not an echo?” What a great slogan. Don’t forget to vote Nov. 4. Many of our nation’s best young men and women died so you could have the right to cast that ballot. Don’t spit in their faces by staying home.