Morning Joe 4/5/2011 -- Political games and Gitmo

On Morning Joe there was a serious discussion about the political games politicians play which come back to bite them. Rudy Guliano was on and the topic was Obama's decision to try the captured terrorists at Gitmo by military trials -- Obama demagogued the Gitmo issue when he was running for President and made Bush and Cheney appear as violators of the Constitution. Joe Scarborough made the claim that Obama should apologize for his attack on Bush. Mika and John Heilemann defended Obama the best they could, minimizing Obama's political games during the 2008 campaign.

Moving beyond Obama and the particular campaign of 2008, and beyond the specific issue of Gitmo, politics have trumped principled service to the country among government officials -- this has been the case for quite some time, and it only gets worse -- from Lee Atwater to James Carville and Paul Begala to Karl Rove to Obama's team of political thugs, these political operatives have been praised for their ability to lie and manipulate. The political game has taken precedent over honest service and leadership. Winning re-election and maintaining power have become so important that campaign mode never shuts off. Most of the conversation on Morning Joe on a regular basis revolves around the political game and who is manipulating more proficiently to fool the American people -- polls replace critical thinking, principles and reason, and whatever pragmatic ploy works is praised as political genius. I guess sometimes enough is enough.

To contrast the discussion regarding political games, Paul Ryan was on and did an honest job of presenting his budget plan, and it created silence among the left-wingers around the table. The political realm doesn't know how to deal with honesty, so they keep quite until they can come up with the right spin, and Obama's team is no doubt holding back, figuring out how to spin Ryan's plan as extreme and detrimental to economic recovery while also appearing open to compromise.

These political games are killing our economy and creating cynicism and disgust among the American people. Public opinion regarding congress is as negative as it's ever been. It's really government in general which the public abhors, because as the Information Age feeds steady streams of information regarding the ugliness and superficiality of the political games being played, people see past the thin veneer of repectability to the heart of the problem.