"...At The Very Least, Let's Make Randy Secretary of HUD, or HOOD As The Case May Be..."

A TV season or so ago, I observed that it seemed like all of the competitors on that year's edition of "American Idol' had one, ultimately disappointing, thing in common.

They seemed to be less inspired to actually becoming the "American Idol" than they were merely becoming an "American Idol contestant".

And, once there, they simply put it in neutral and , week after week, offered up a predictable groove/rut combination of getting along by going along/same old same old.

I remembered that recently in the context of the next presidential race and the, to date, less than stellar list of potential candidates.

Including, but certainly not limited to, the incumbent.

Clear grasp of the historically obvious notwithstanding, I think a fair case could be made that American politics is stuck in the mud of a "the lesser of the evils runs against the very best of our most mediocre" part of the life cycle.

Admittedly, politics is, by its nature, very much like weather, as described long ago by Mark Twain.

Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

And while it's a natural inclination to fill blog page after blog page with the "what ails and how to fix it" of our way of life, I've reached a point in life where simplification seems to trump elucidation more often than not.

So, in that spirit, consider this.

If we have an ice cube's chance of ever turning the system away from the icebergs, we need to find some way to supplant electability with accountability.

More importantly, we need to keep asking the question until we get the answer and not settle for the sound byte/catch phrase/stump speech excerpt that rolls out of pretty much every political mouth like yet one more chorus of any given Beatles tune on Idol's "Lennon-McCartney" night.

Given current DC brouhahas, it's small wonder that the phrase "the American people are frustrated" is going to be heard more and more often in coming days/weeks.

But maybe it's time to be less distracted by the frustration itself and work a little harder at exposing the true, root cause.

At this writing (and, please, friends, foes and/or family of any and all political persuasions, feel free to take your best shot at showing me the error of my ways), every political candidate wandering across and around my radar clearly, and obviously, has an agenda.

But, like those mediocre "candidates" of that forgettable Idol season, their agenda is not so much about getting the job done...

...as it is simply getting the job.

They won't give us the answers we want and deserve until we start asking the right questions.

Or, if all else fails, put Simon, Randy, Paula, Ellen, Kara, Steven and JLo in the Electoral College.

As a rule, they seem to be better judges of potential than the voters.

God bless America, dawg....