As I was thinking of all the invective flying around Washington D.C. as we await the State ‘o the Union address, my thoughts turned to hunting, then duck hunting , then lame duck hunting…..

Having owned our country place in Northern Missouri just a year now, I’ve become, ok, obsessed with the outdoors.  A new friend is a rabid hunter, and I’m learning a lot as I take to the field with gun or bow in hand.

Last autumn, after having prepared the clover plot all year, and having scouted in late summer, I finally camouflaged myself until you’d have thought I was doing a “Randy goes Rambo” movie and headed to the stand.  Within an hour I bagged my first archery deer.  It was a unique and at the same time humbling and even reverent experience.  But compared to a rifle kill, I felt like my dedication and skill were truly put to a fair  test against that 8 pointer.  My next challenge….duck hunting.

Why this prelude to a political column?  I’m convinced that hunting is a lot like politics.  As technology has evolved and the hunt becomes subordinated to the bells and whistles enabling it, the purpose might easily be lost.  My buddy is an old fashioned duck hunter.  We’ll brave the frosty wind chills, that cold, clammy feeling when the insulation has worked too well and the sweat turns cold, and wend our way out to the blind.  Sometimes the conditions might mandate lying like a mummy in a flat boat, covered with camouflage, calling with a trained mouth trying to deceive the birds into coming in.  Then at the right moment, we’ll cut loose with firepower aimed at darting and diving birds fling 80 miles an hour, hoping all those hours spent with the clay birds training our coordination will pay off.   No heated blinds with cook tops.  No decoys with flapping wings. My gun is an old pump model.  Just our predatory skills against their prey instincts, so it’s almost fair for the opposition.  And if we win, it’s with deep respect.

But not in Washington.   The Peoples’ goal, a free and prosperous people, full of respect yet packed with ambition, generosity and self reliance has been lost in the process belying the bells and whistles of politics.  Instead of spending time in the field with our rudimentary equipment and sharply honed acumen, our leaders are caught up in the grandeur of drama, power mongering and the cute tools of polls, marketing and sound bites.  Just look at the Alito or recent MLK spectacles and tell me it ain’t true.  They’re the butchers of an ingenious political system, and the distributors of the pork they’ve carved out of all of us.  But back to “W”, lame duck du jour.

As George Bush prepares his ’06 state of the union address, the nation seems more divided than ever.  The looming question is:  Can ‘The Uniter’ mend America’s torn political fabric?

No matter which side of the political canyon you’ve landed on, the reality of our deep cultural and political divide is palpable.  And there are growing signs that within both major parties, secondary stress fractures threaten to turn into major faults.  After the recent Alito SCOTUS hearings, some of my most passionately liberal friends questioned the vitriolic and transparently self-serving rhetoric spewing from Kennedy, Biden and the other Judiciary Committee Dems.  Similarly, callers to my show and others around the country are fuming at the utter lack of self restraint that the Republican led congress, approved by the President’s ever willing signature, have shown in spending, immigration control and access abuse. 

As with most second term administrations, the aroma of lame duck roasting over a political fire is wafting again.   Some even smelled it before the first term ended!  My political olfactory sense is sending malodorous messages now, though.  Republican leadership insists on falling into the same spending practices, laissez-faire immigration policies, lame tinkering with a broken lobbying and campaign reform system, not to mention the perpetuation of a heavy handed tax code that their conservative base abhors.  All the while, the Party of No, the Wailing Whiners, the Disloyal Opposition continues to offer absolute vacancy in terms of embracing structural substantive reform.  So we the people are left with a pallid choice.  Either we identify  true blue (or would that be red) conservatives with a common sense populist appeal to emerge as  legislative leader, or the President Bush’s vision for the rest of his tenure will be so much lame duck patè.

Why can’t a charismatic Bush partner with such congressional leaders, appealing to the American ideal of self determination and community reliance?  To a healthy wariness of big gifts from powerful people?  To eliminating beaureaucratic intrusiveness into our obligation to support lean and efficient government with our hard earned taxes?  To the original notion that those folks who govern are temporary stewards of the power they wield as citizen-statesmen?   To honoring Thomas Jefferson’s notion that the potential for corruption increases directly with the size of the governmental denomination?

This is the Uniter we elected and the message with whom I’ve been hard pressed to find dissent-regardless of political tastes.  No, George Bush isn’t the Great Communicator.  But he’s had some unprecedented challenges, both abroad and at home.  His only hope for a meaningful completion at the helm is to remember our common roots and appeal to them.  Perhaps that means some drama coaching, but it certainly will require a major philosophical revolution on The Hill.  What happens in Iraq is important, but for the long term good of the country we need now more than ever  Congressional leaders who are willing to embrace real reform with charisma and self-effacing style, even if it means political suicide.  Only by partnering  with these “American  Party”  Congressmen or Senators that the President can hope to advance his War on Terror-diluted agenda.  Otherwise, this lame duck might leave us all eating Peking duck sooner than we imagined.