By YoYo Zhang
There is one common goal for all individuals standing at the tops of power structures, elected Presidents and hereditary Dictators alike: to stay in power for as long as possible. For the President that would mean getting re-elected for another four year’s living in the White House. To do this, there is the pressure to please the ones that brought him into power in the first place. His donors, his campaign staff, and, ultimately his voters.
I hear people say the current President is “not my President”. That couldn’t be truer. The President might as well come to you and say “you’re not my voter”. There’s no reason for him to gain your support for his party because it wasn’t you that put him in power.
This is undoubtedly a very cynical way of looking at the Presidency, but this appears to be how the system operates the most efficiently under these polarized times.
We hear talk about efforts to encourage “working across the aisle”. It’s unfortunate that the only way to get anything done in Washington is by working through the President’s own party. Woodrow Wilson learned this the hard way. He appointed only non-partisan progressives into office only to find out that there was no way he could proceed with policy agenda unless he worked through his party.
Such are the inconveniences of a two-party rule, a zero-sum game. Winning doesn’t matter as long as the other side loses.
Right now it’s less than a month to the midterms. We have the President is calling his opponents “a mob” and other cities are filled with chants for a “blue wave” and for the President’s impeachment. This doesn’t seem in any way like a harmonious society. I truly wonder how anything gets done here with all the time spent on finding ways to pull the rug out from under the other side.
It might take a catastrophe to remind people that ideological arguments are pointless, something that lets people know that practical concerns, instead of intangible ideas, is what’s worth our time. At this point, it seems like such a forced course correction might be necessary before the divisions in the country grow any wider. In the meantime, there’s nothing people can do except place their trust the drafters of the constitution did their jobs properly and the system can weather this storm.
This pressure to please has turned the country into a spitting war within itself.
Weak men bring forth hard times,
Hard times bring forth strong men,
Strong men bring forth good times,
Good times bring forth weak men.
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of NYU DC Violets or the NYU DC Program, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.
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