Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac
Unless I have another John McCain in mind he has been in the Senate since 1987 and before that was a Congressman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain I could not see much change though coming from someone who has been a politician in DC for so long.
On the other hand, it seems like Barack Obama has spent most of his time in the US Senate preparing for his run at the Oval Office.
Both McCain AND Obama though seemed to have very keen eyes on the prize of the Oval Office for quite some time.
In my mind, Barack Obama is still a real untested politician. I did vote for Barack Obama on November 4, 2008 though. We will just have to wait and see what kind of solutions he comes up with the Senate and House for the many problems facing the United States.
The big hurdle with some of the legislation passed by this "new" Congress and supported by the new President Barack Obama will be the US Supreme Court which President George W. Bush has 8 years to put his nominees on. |
The Supreme Court is not as fluid an operation as many would be led to believe. It really deals in only one subject - Constitutional Law. Everything else just flows as subsets of it. While the jurists who staff it may have personal leanings, they have demonstrated a propensity to view the law independent of their personalities. That's what makes them good jurists and why no matter who replaces whom, SCOTUS will still be SCOTUS.
Laws passed are meaningless unless four things happen: 1) Congress gives the Executive Branch the funding to enforce them; 2) the Executive Branch actually enforces them; 3) If Constitutionality is challenged, the Supreme Court rules for-or-against; and 4) Congress fulfills is oversight responsibilities with vigor.
Congress - at least the greatest majority of seat-holders - have proven themselves to be lumps of inorganic material when it comes to accomplishing anything. A 10% approval rate for a group of people with an average incumbency of over 16 years! With records like that, the lot of them would have been fired from any business a long time before accruing that sort of longevity. Yet, they keep on a'chugging along....
A new President is not going to make the next Congress "better perform" than its current dismal rating. The Congress[wo]men are still basically the same human beings who flunked out this past term. If after 10-20-30 years they can't work together any better, having a new guy in the "other branch" of government won't affect Congress. It is still its own animal, and diseased with too-long-a-tenure.