Dear Joe, Yes We Can !!!

Hey Folks -

Here's a recent column by Joe Hallett of the Columbus Dispatch which really bothered me. He's got it exactly wrong!!

Check it out, and I'll share my response to him in the next posting.

- Uke Man

The truth hurts, so candidates usually try to avoid it
Sunday, March 2, 2008
By Joe Hallett

There is perhaps no phrase more oft-spoken by the presidential candidates than, "We need to . . ."

We need to bring manufacturing jobs back to Ohio. We need to change the North American Free Trade Agreement. We need to provide health insurance for everyone. We need to get out of Iraq. We need to go after al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. We need to cut taxes for the middle class. We need to make college affordable. We need to save Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. We need to stop the illegal aliens. We need to repair America's crumbling infrastructure. We need to put two chickens in every pot.

All of this we-need-to talk creates expectations in voters' minds that the candidates actually will do in the White House what they say we need to do.

But doing all that needs to be done is next to impossible, especially given a dysfunctional Congress, the government's lack of resources and an American populace that has embraced an entitlement mentality with little appetite for sacrifice.

It seems disingenuous, for instance, to say America is at war. More precisely, America's military is at war. Aside from the families devastated by the loss of loved ones, the rest of us have sacrificed little since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. By comparison, from 1941-45, America was at war.

What the presidential candidates should be saying is, "You need to hear this . . ." Real leadership is about telling people the truth, no matter how hard to swallow, and then persuading them to make the sacrifices necessary to accomplish public goals.

But any candidate who tells the truth, the real truth, most likely will be defeated, because we can't handle the truth.

Consider a Jan. 12 speech by Sen. John McCain, the likely GOP nominee, who spoke at a town hall meeting in blue-collar Warren, Mich.: "The jobs that are leaving the state of Michigan have left and are not coming back."

For speaking this truth about the auto industry, McCain lost Michigan, was labeled a pessimist by his then-opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and criticized by labor leaders.

In Youngstown on Feb. 19, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic frontrunner, grabbed his favorite Ohio villain -- the North American Free Trade Agreement -- and blamed it for the city's loss of 50,000 jobs during the 1990s. In truth, Youngstown's steel mills began closing in 1977, well before NAFTA. Although free trade has cost the state some manufacturing jobs, Ohio's exports in 2006 were about $38 billion, a $10 billion increase from four years earlier.

At a Lorain rally Tuesday, a teacher complained to Sen. Hillary Clinton that she was struggling to pay her college loans. Clinton said that citizens who go into public service should have their college loans forgiven. So, who's going to pay the bank? The rest of us?

Clinton and Obama have health-insurance plans that annually would cost $110 billion and $65 billion, respectively. Each would raise about $55 billion by ending tax cuts for those earning $250,000 a year. What about the rest of the money?

Both of the Democratic candidates say they would end the war in Iraq, which is costing $322 billion a year. Money freed up from war costs could be used to support other programs, they say. But the war is being financed on borrowed money, and the country is running a $400 billion annual deficit and is $9 trillion in debt.

Maybe the candidates should speak this truth to voters: It's time to act responsibly with tax dollars because we can't afford all that you want.

The nation is heading toward a financial meltdown. With the baby-boom retirement onslaught on the doorstep, preserving Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare will require sacrifices that could include more taxes, fewer beneficiaries and lower benefits.

The candidates don't talk about those realities, or the true costs of insuring everyone, or the real consequences of leaving Iraq, or an unstoppable global economy that is marginalizing our might, or the financial bind we're creating for our children and their children.

The candidates promise us everything because we expect it. The truth doesn't get votes, and we really don't want to hear it anyway.

Joe Hallett is senior editor at The Dispatch.
jhallett@dispatch.com