More on Common Sense
In my previous Blog I said that our representatives in Washington were mostly without common sense in their too often futile attempts to solve the nation’s problems.
In today’s papers I encounter two voices of common sense, neither one in a position of power in Washington, one speaking about job creation, and the other about the Middle East, in particular the frozen “peace process” between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The first voice is that of Marco Rubio, a challenger to Charlie Crist, the popular Republican governor of Florida, in the Republican primary to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Mel Martinez.
Mr. Rubio has this to say about the current high unemployment numbers: “The bottom line is that jobs in America are created by people who . . . decide to start a business or expand an existing business.” My bottom line, exactly. Common sense?
Why isn’t Washington saying the same thing? Does it have anything to do with Mr. Rubio’s own family background in Communist Cuba, where all jobs were government handouts to the people, that which obviously did not work to the people’s advantage.
In my opinion Mr. Rubio has only to resist the lure of the Tea Partyers on the far (paranoid) Right, has only to place himself at the center of the country where most of us live. If he does this his chances are good. For now most of his positions are in the center, as you can read for yourself if you go here.
He needs also to resist the lure of Sarah Palin which may be difficult because they do have traits in common. For example, what Mr. Rubio says about Ms. Palin could be said about himself: “I think she brings a level of real-life everyday sentiment that people identify with. . . . I think she energizes people.”
The Times article has Mr. Rubio staking out a campaign much like an updated version of Ronald Reagan’s, one primarily focused on jobs and national security. According to Mr. Rubio Washington should not be “taking borrowed money to fund the general operation of government…”, or believe in what is patently absurd, that “somehow the government will build so many roads and bridges that everyone will have a job for the next 30 years…”
Common sense comes through in most of what he says. “I don’t care whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge,… If you allow politicians to spend money, they’ll do it.”
When we turn to the Middle East, in this instance to Robert Wright who is talking with David Frum on Wright’s own Blogging Heads TV about the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum, we may very well have left far behind even the very possibility of common sense solutions.
In this more and more never never land opposed religious beliefs as well as opposed readings of history separate the two populations, with few if any physical differences, into black and white, apple and orange, sweet and sour, oil and water strongholds.
But Robert Wright, even here does manage to articulate some common sense views. What, he asks, David is most in Israel’s advantage? Is it to go on refusing any kind of agreement with the Palestinians?
Because this means, doesn’t it, that the demographics, now favorable to the Palestinians, will result in some not too distant future time that the Palestinian Muslims, those now living in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, outnumber by far the Israeli Jews.
Mr. Wright insists and asks, is this to Israel’s advantage? —a greater Israel with a population of Palestinians outnumbering their own? In this situation Israel will only with great pain and difficulty resist international pressures to allow the Palestinians the vote.
And this vote, when it does come, will mean the end of Israel, unless, of course, at some earlier time the country has not already been destroyed by one of the more and more readily available, to the Palestinian and other terrorists, weapons of mass destruction.
Wouldn’t common sense say, along with Robert Wright, that it would be in Israel’s advantage to make right now whatever concessions would be necessary in order to gain Palestinian acceptance of a two state solution?
But of course, Israel doesn’t and probably won’t see it this way.
David Frum may have been speaking for Israel when he asked Mr. Wright, not illegitimately but somewhat Machiavellian, why when the Palestinians had started war after war with Israel, had lost them all, and had refused all earlier Israeli settlement offers, why now should Israel concede to the Palestinians, hand them over on a platter, that which they were not able to achieve for themselves? That made no sense. No common sense?
By the way my other voice of common sense today, Marco Rubio, is a staunch, unshakable defender of Israel’s position, even, perhaps, that of Jerusalem being their one and indivisible capital. What’s the common sense solution in regard to Jerusalem? Marco Rubio lives in Florida where his solution does make good political sense.
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