» Book Review: Schmucks!: Our Favorite Fakes, Frauds, Lowlifes, Liars, the Armed and Danger... An Interview with Robert &

In his latest book, The Myth America Pageant , Robert Wickes takes a very critical look at the state of government today. In his eyes the Republicans and Democrats have blurred into one amoebic mass, caring little for the "Ordinary Joe," while happily feathering their own personal nests along the way.

In 2004, I developed a severe headache from beating my nugget against the wall for most of the campaign season. Like most of the country, I got pretty tired of hearing candidates from both sides, aided and abetted by a news media with its own agenda, pose and preen and indulge us with their munificent wisdom and imply that only they could save us Ordinary Joes from ourselves. So I decided somebody needed to tell “the rest of the story.” And, what with my recently swelled head and all, I figured it might as well be me. Politics are what the military would call a target-rich environment - you don’t have to be an “expert” to hit something.

I’ve heard a lot flimsier reasoning from a lot more learned icons than dear old Dad. He’s a card-carrying member of the Tom Brokaw-named “Greatest Generation” who lived through the Great Depression, and fought in WWII. We should all be so fortunate as to have their perspective. And, God bless him, at 91 he’s still writing his Congressman, going to American Legion meetings, and hosting political discussions at his home. The country’s really going to miss these guys. His Congressman, of course, won’t miss him a bit.

Wait a minute… Okay, sorry, but my side was hurting from laughing so much. Do I think things will change? Yes, but not for the better. Chapter five tells you why. Long story short, we have lost balance and contrast between the major political parties. In the past we had one side arguing for limited government and one side arguing for an ever expanding role of government. That tug-of-war kept the nation from swinging too far or too quickly to either side. Now all we are given is a choice between Republican big government solutions and Democrat big government solutions. And yet we’ve just witnessed an entire century of failed experiments in Big Government-governments. Such failures, however, do not deter our wizards in Washington from figuring they know how to do it better. Why? Because the bigger the government the greater the power of those in power. The prize keeps getting bigger for them and the momentum is probably too great to reverse. It will take a major catastrophe, probably financial, for the nation to wake up. And even then, we’ll expect the wizards to have the answer instead of realizing that the wizards were actually the problem. We’ve been in Plato’s Cave too long.

There are some 15,000 school districts in the nation and I’d be willing to bet that there are at least 15,000 good ideas on how to fix things. So let’s start by getting rid of the Department of Education and encourage the states to go even further by giving control back to the local level. Then we’ll see who builds the better mousetrap.

Vote for Pedro. Honestly, Ordinary Joe has got to realize that today’s political game is not about solving problems; it’s only about re-election. So here’s my advice: Stop voting for incumbents; they probably lied to you anyway. Give your money to the Boy Scouts instead. And, hey! How about sending all the members of Congress on a junket to Antarctica for a year - wouldn’t the politicians be surprised if they discovered that nobody missed them? While they’re gone, let’s all stop whining about how everything that’s bad in life is someone else’s fault. It’s time for Joe to be responsible for himself and be accountable for his own actions. We have a guaranteed right to pursue happiness; we don’t have a guaranteed right to get it. There’s plenty of it out there, and you don’t have to make someone else give it up just so you can get some for yourself. And that’s doubly true for corporate panhandlers. (P.S. Anyone who doesn’t know who Pedro is needs to get out more).

Bite your tongue. Actually, my knee-jerk answer has always been, “I’ve got too much self-respect to be a politician.” Isn’t that sad? That’s the point we’ve arrived at in America: Anybody who’s decent enough to be trusted running the country doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. All of us decent, trustworthy Ordinary Joes would rather just be left alone to manage our own lives. The truth is I would never survive in office. I would be completely unable to compromise my principles. I would end up be assigned to the import shoelace oversight committee.

Campaigns are a complete waste of time. The simple fact is that, beginning in 1960, presidential races are won by the guy with the best hair! Look it up. There are only two very explainable exceptions (LBJ won because everybody was afraid Goldwater was going to blow up the world; and while Dukakis had better hair than Bush the Elder, nobody could remember his hair because of that dopey picture of him sitting in a tank with that huge helmet on). That means Guiliani and McCain don’t have a chance. And who knows how a woman will change this time-honored tradition?

The You-Tube ad you mentioned is a perfect example of politics today - it’s all style over substance. It’s a cool-looking ad, but no one really knows what it means. Television time is extraordinarily expensive, so campaigns must try to win their votes in seconds. Hit pieces fill the bill; deep thoughts take too much time. We are a society demanding instant gratification. We don’t want to spend time making cookies, let alone educating ourselves on the ramifications of promises to deliver national healthcare insurance for all. Consider this: Campaign volunteers stand on street corners waving their signs on election day because it’s effective. What does that tell you about voters who are making their decision based on the last sign that they saw? Small wonder we have hanging chads.

Elections have become increasingly contentious, with lots of new players like 527c pressure groups, because, again, as government grows so grows the power prize. The Internet has opened the doors for a whole new — and important — kind of information dissemination, but the intelligence filter on it isn’t necessarily better than the ones on television or newspapers.

Promise not to tell the state patrol, okay? I outlined the entire book on a pad on the center armrest of a U-Haul truck while I was hauling some furniture across eastern Washington state. No radio, no company, no view. What else was I to do? It took me about a year to flesh out the first draft and another year to edit and revise it. I’d already done most of my homework in conjunction with another book I was doing, but I had lots of stops and starts to research specifics along the way. And I have a day job.

Because of the world scene, I may have to expand my horizons and do a global sequel. How does The Myth UNIVERSE Pageant sound? Actually, I have already completed another book. It’s a story of, naturally, political intrigue. It extends all the current political trends I rail against in The Myth America Pageant just a few years into the future when those trends lead to (dare I say it?) a national financial catastrophe of the sort I alluded to earlier. I wrote it first, but shelved the project to work on Myth America, I actually think the novel is even more interesting because it makes it easier to visualize what is probably the inevitable endpoint for all the political mischief we are currently enduring.

When I was in college I learned that an “expert” was anyone who came from at least 25 miles away and brought his own slides. Bottom line? I AM an expert - I have over 50 years experience being an Ordinary Joe, confronting all the same problems and issues as every other Ordinary Joe. And I know how to communicate with them. The only difference is that I’ve taken a lot of extra time to study the historical, philosophical, and economic fundamentals surrounding the growth and success of our nation in my attempt to understand what’s gone wrong. Along the way it’s given me tremendous insight into the motivations and methods of those who aspire to lead us. Every voter should do exactly the same thing before they cast another ballot. But if they can’t, well, just read my book and save a lot of time. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. Most of all it will make you think.

Postscript: I am pretty certain that Robert will be watching this article, so if any of you have any questions for him leave a comment. I am sure you will get a reply!

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