Personal Democracy Forum

It was sad to hear Mike say that he's given up hope for a national initiative here in America. Certainly a great deal of the interest in a national initiative, and direct democracy, is due to his efforts. I think that direct democracy is inevitable. I don't know how long it will take to be enacted, but Mike Gravel's name will always be associated with the national initiative movement, and he will be regarded as one of the founding fathers and mothers of direct democracy in America.

Direct democracy seems inevitable to me because only the people who can rein in the excesses of their unrepresentative, "representative governments" will survive as functioning polities in the future. As Obama hastens our crash, burning the candle at both ends with his Wall Street giveaways, digging ever deeper the financial hole we're in already, actively escalating aggressive wars we surely cannot afford, it becomes more and more clear that we are going down if we cannot wrest control of our government from him and the crazed puppeteers manipulating him, making him dance like St Vitus at the ends of his strings. But I see no evidence of that happening. People are still calling Obama a "competent" president! So perhaps Mike is correct in his assessment of the chances of a national initiative passing "in time" to foreclose what now seems inevitable. I don't know when the actual crash will come, any more than I know when the first national initiative will be passed... but it will come... and it will be passed..

It is very puzzling to hear Mike call Barack Obama a very "competent" leader. Perhaps he means a very "competent" politician. I remember his sympathetic words for Governor Palin as well, and I am sure it was the latter he thought praiseworthy in her case.

Strange political judgment from a man with such acute political insight otherwise, into the structural deficiencies of our government.