Speak up for straight talk...

On June 3 a Washington Post columnist, E. J. Dionne Jr., asked "What might a reasonable, constructive presidential campaign look like?" I recommend his column, read it here.

He admits that "ideology quickly gets in the way" of answering this question, I'm not going to try to give a short solution or a short complaint about how unlikely such a campaign is in the current twisted, viciously partisan state of public debate.

But I think it's worth taking a moment to admit that we don't have a reasonable, constructive political debate going on, and to wish that more people would just talk straight about what they really want.

And let's make this finger-wagging apply to the whole spectrum, I'll start by mentioning that Democrats and progressives and liberals and such who draw the line in the sand, and say "We can't touch Social Security benefits!" are defining a political rampart, not a sound public policy.




Dionne offers a provocative call-out to the other side, the Republicans and conservatives and Tea Party backers and such….E. J. says "Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less."

E. J. also says "Arguing in a serious way about the single question of economic inequality would make all the other nonsense of the next five months endurable."

I don't know how endurable the rest of the presidential campaign can be, I'm hunkered down.

I do know that it could be better if we all would talk straight about what we personally believe and what we personally want and what we honestly see as our own personal best interests….. and stop all the codeword argument and all the shadow debate about deficits and Social Security and health care and class warfare and "college for all" and "welfare queens" and the Keystone pipeline and "job creators" and……


Another take on straight talk