Fixing Washington -- Two Modest Proposals

Can Congress and the White House get any more unpopular in 2008? Well, yeah, but their 2007 popularity (or lack of popularity) ratings have been plenty ugly enough. Indeed, they were, as many Texans like to say, downright double-ugly as the year ended.

Modest Proposal #1: To end Washington, D.C.’s “inside the Beltway” fixation on running—and ruining--America, why not move the nation’s capitol to a city near the geographical center of the United States? Yep, Wichita, Kansas, should become the next vortex sutra of American politics. Our leaders should have to rule from the very heart of the heartland. And those poor, left-behind K Street lobbyists? They will just have to buy plane tickets, bus tickets and train tickets if they wish to bring their bags of cash into the new center of influence.

Modest Proposal #2: We can keep electing presidents, vice presidents and governors. But everyone else over the age of 40 should have to register for the political draft and, if selected, be required to serve a four-year term as a U.S. or state senator or representative. There will be no more campaigns and no more cash donations for these offices. All political draftees will attend eight weeks of special boot camp, where they will re-learn American history and appropriate state history. They also will study the contents of key historical documents and learn how to work together as teams willing to honor, protect, defend and serve their states and nation. It will be government of the people, by the people, for the people, in a much truer sense.

Religions (or no religion), handicaps, birthplace, and income levels should be no impediment to holding office, as long as one is a native or naturalized citizen. Someone living on Social Security, Medicare and Republican rip-off drug plans could be drafted and suddenly find themselves drawing a U.S. Senator’s salary, with full benefits.

Anyone claiming to be “too stupid” or “too crooked” to serve will not be allowed to dodge the political draft. America has survived many episodes of these two qualities already, at all levels of government.

Moving the capitol to the heartland and letting America’s “real” people rule will not destroy our nation. Indeed, it couldn’t make us any worse than what we have already become: a dollar-ocracy where everything, including loyalty and patriotism, gets sold to the highest bidder.

These two changes might even help us become the kind of nation we were taught to believe in—and often did believe in—when we were young: America the Beautiful; esteemed leader of the free world; open to all, friend to all; the land of opportunity—not opportunism.

Wichita vortex America!

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