America Needs A Bench Coach
Posted on October 7, 2013
My 7 year-old son plays for a Little League team, the Angels, which is a pretty funny name for a bunch of rambunctious little boys.
Baseball isn’t the fastest game in the world, especially for 7 year-olds, and the kids can get kind of kooky on the bench when we are up to bat.
One of the coaches for the Angels is a mother to one of the boys. She is the bench coach, and her job is to keep the kids from pouring water on one another, stop them from hitting their teammates (unintentionally, of course) with a baseball, and otherwise keep the kids in line.
In other words, she is the adult who keeps an eye on the kids.
You ever think that the Federal government needs some adult supervision, especially now that government has shut down?
The President is supposed to be the adult and Congress is supposed to act like Little Leaguers.
Unfortunately, Barack Obama is like the kid who won’t let another kid use the baseball helmet he got from his parents. And he won’t negotiate over it.
In fact, he won’t negotiate at all, over anything.
That’s unsustainable and he should know it.
Conservatives who threaten to shut the government down unless they get their way on Obamacare are no better. They are like the kids who won’t give the baseball back to the coach unless they get to play in the infield.
The lack of maturity coming from the Congress does remind me of the lack of maturity that sometimes comes from the 7 year-olds on the Angels. The big difference? The kids on the Angels are 7.
The other big difference, of course, is that the various tempter tantrums that infect the battle between the legislative and executive branches is the real world implications of the Congressional fight.
When kids act like kids, there is an expectation that the kids will eventually grow up.
When Congress acts like children, jobs are lost, the economy stalls, and people lose faith in their government.
All of this dysfunction could help a female candidate like Hillary Clinton. I say that with no relish, because I am not a big fan of the former Secretary of State.
But if the men in our government continue to act like the boys on my son’s baseball team, voters might decide they need a bench coach like the Angel’s bench, a woman who can keep the boys in line.