Musings at Altitude

I’m sitting out in Gaithersburg, MD, tonight, and I’ve watched with amusement the news coverage of the vote in the House of Representatives today on the bailout bill.  I’m no longer stunned when politics enter critical decisions in our country.  I’m also no longer stunned when any of our politicians blame their actions or their votes on comments or actions from others.  I remember Newt Gingrich and his comments when he had to exit through the back of AF-1, and I remember how comical and petty it sounded as the press magnified his comments and actions and put the focus squarely on him. 

I saw something similar today with the comments coming from the House of Representatives, but this time, the issue was one of extreme national emergency.  In this case, an apparently much needed bill to bailout our financial institutions failed to pass sending our markets into a freefall.  Shortly after the vote, some members of the minority party of the House got in front of the cameras and blamed the lack of votes to pass this bill on a speech just before the vote made by the Speaker of the House.  In her speech, the Speaker used this important time to just in front of the vote to assess and asign blame to the Administration and its policies for the current financial crisis, and in her comments, she obviously played some politics rather than focused on solving this very important problem facing our nation.

I’ve often said that “life is all about assessing blame”, because I honestly believe that many people feel more comfortable with pointing fingers and making political gain rather than solving problems and advancing any significant issue.  I saw that played out so perfectly today, and with all the good in this country, we saw the insanity of politics behind just about every microphone.

Late last year, I was visiting some partners in Turkey, and they expressed their deep frustrations and even anger with our Congress and our overall political climate today.  When I had a chance to respond to their comments, I stood up in front of their dinner crowd and said, “all of you and all of us have something in common…neither of us like our Congress.”  That got quite a chuckle.  At that time, the polls showed an approval rating about 23%, and after today, I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near that high.

Assessing blame allows each of us to divert attention from our real responsibilities of making decisions (regardless of political consequence) for the good of our country or our business or our family.  What we need now more than ever is a generation of leaders at all levels of our country that don’t spend their time determining political consequence and don’t use all their energy assessing blame.  In fact, what we need are less politicians and more people deeply concerned and solely concerned about the issues facing this country.