Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Here’s a letter that I sent a few weeks back to the New York Times:

I’m flabbergasted by the
faith that people – left, right, and center – put in politics and in
the candidates du jour. Millions of Americans today famously believe
that a President Obama will fundamentally "change" America (into what,
though, is unclear). And today, David Brooks suggests that a President
McCain might well quash special-interest-group politics and turn Uncle
Sam’s attention chiefly to the general interest ("Talking Versus
Doing," May 20).

These are delusions. I’ll bet $100 that,
regardless of which candidate wins the White House, in 2013 the federal
budget will still contain agricultural subsidies and tariffs that take
billions of dollars from the many to give to the few – that a majority
of Members of Congress will continue to successfully sponsor earmarks -
that the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare will be
no smaller than they are today – and that partisan bickering will be
every bit as much a part of the daily news as it is now.