By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

Trying getting Maverick-style this election

I have been writing for this publication since it’s inception and over those years I have spent most of my time proving I am a Maverick.

I write Maverick-like columns, in a very Maverick-like fashion and often thumb my nose at the deadlines of my editor, which of course is very Mavericky of me. I have crossed company lines many times and reached out to my colleagues at publications like the Thrifty Nickel and South Alabama Corvette Trader Journal. I get my Maverick on all the time, at home; work even while watching re-runs of…you guessed it “Maverick!” They would have to get the Maverick-whisperer to tame me and even that would not work because I am sooo Mavericky!

I joke because I care, I really do. The Maverick mantel that McCain and Palin are riding is just another way to say change. Obama and Biden have simplified this concept even more, using the word “change” to mean change. Obviously the focus group study reports and the fact that the current administration’s approval rating is and has been hovering a little below the percentage of people that liked New Coke caused all the candidates to campaign on change. My worry is that whichever ticket gets elected will not be able to deliver the sea change that the voters are calling for.

Watching the three presidential debates had me yelling at the television like a televangelist and also confirmed my beliefs that both the Democrat and the Republican parties are pretty sure that the bulk of the voters do not have a clue as to how power is separated to the three branches of government. Both McCain and Obama and their understudies Palin and Biden have laid out planks of their respective platforms that the Executive branch is unable by law to fulfill.

It does not bother me that the candidates would make great promises to get elected; it does bother me though that these messages get so much traction with American voters.

We the people have truly become an ignorant lot. Survey after survey, scientific and popular, show that a plurality of Americans have little knowledge of the workings of government. I don’t mean to say that we all should spend our days boning up on the intricacies of federal and state laws, but we should at least know the basics to be able to call bulls#!+ on candidates when they promise things to the citizens that they can never deliver. I guess this realization should be no surprise though since we are a nation of people that know more about the workings of our TiVos than our mortgages.

It also worries me to hear so much agreeing going on in this race. In the debates the candidates fell over themselves trying to agree with each other on too many issues, debate and disagreement leads to a stronger union. Can you imagine the fate of the sheep if the Wile E. Coyote and the Sheepdog had gotten along better while they were at work?

Sure when they clocked out they were civil to each other, as the candidates should be, but when they were on the clock they both did their job. What if the Sheepdog would have reached across the aisle to the coyote and made a compromise to let him have a sheep or two? What if the coyote would have given up on trying to eat the sheep? I imagine it would have been pink slip time for the Sam the sheepdog. Difference in opinion and a degree of partisanship is what keeps sheep alive and sheepdogs and coyotes employed.

Finally I have one more idea I would like to offer the candidates, first-come-first-serve. After bailing out the mega banks and an insurance giant we the citizens, the ones that sign you the politicians’ paychecks, need a bail out of our own. The policies of deficit spending have left the United States beyond poor. We are at the time of writing this 10 trillion, that is trillion with a trill, in debt. I believe there is only one way out of this and it is not a tax increase nor is it cutting the budget because we know neither of those remedies will get any play with a majority of voters.

No the solution is simple and it is right in front of us, it is on our televisions late at night or on Sunday mornings when we should be at church. The answer is a relief fund, but instead of benefiting starving children worldwide it would benefit the American taxpayer. We could get an empathetic grandfather-like figure spokesman and he could take viewers worldwide on a brief tour through impoverished areas of our country like Wall Street or the Treasury Department.

That is all it would take to jerk at the heart strings of some family in Latvia. Our message would let do-gooders around the planet realize that for the equivalent of the price of just one new car a day they could help an American with a social security number break the cycle of Federal-debt-imposed poverty. I think if we get the right Wilfred Brimley-looking spokesman we can get this debt paid off in 10 years.

There’s some change for you…Maverick style! Thank you God bless America and good night.

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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