Editorial: Citizens Vote, Winners Govern

This Editorial appears in the Nov. 3 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Although it may be a self-serving thought, we believe if anyone should vote Nov. 4, it should be readers of Transport Topics. You’re the people who understand trucking, and if the industry is going to be heard from in state capitals and on Capitol Hill, then you’re the people who will have to cast ballots.

So do it. Vote for senators and representatives; vote for governors and state legislators. This story even tells why you should vote on state and local amendments and questions.

In many respects, it’s been a miserable campaign season, featuring shrill television commercials produced around the insulting notion that most voting viewers are uneducated on most issues. Regardless of the quality of the choices available, though, there will be winners, and those people will get the power and responsibility for making choices for the public.

Once those people are sworn in, we hope they will take their jobs seriously. The U.S. economy is in pretty good shape now, but pollsters have consistently found the public’s mood to be sour. Real Clear Politics looked at six right-track/wrong-track polls in October and found that, on average, 66.3% of likely voters thought the country was largely on the wrong track, with only 27.2% saying the nation is on the right track.

Despite the declining unemployment levels of the moment, there are reasons to be concerned. Many national problems are obvious — roads and bridges are our favorite examples — but for years now, little has been done to address them.

Winning a midterm election just has to be about more than positioning a political party for 2016, which is, of course, the key steppingstone to 2020 and then, well, 2024.

Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have been so concerned with “filling the tree” parliamentary procedures to ward off ambush votes that matters of the greatest importance are shunted aside until the perfect convergence of House-Senate-White House occurs.

But guess what, that rarely happens, and even when it does, it disappears quickly.

The country is not on the cusp of catastrophe, but there are issues — budget, including entitlements and taxation, regulatory burdens and transportation — that can’t hold indefinitely.

If you see a freshly elected official in coming days, congratulate him or her, and then tell the politician that you’re watching and you expect performance.