Section 5 is a new title, but it’s a story I’ve worked on for a number of years.  It was sparked by the increasing rancor that our politics have taken on.  The basic work of solving the nations’s problems has been pushed aside in favor of single-minded drives for power.  The philosophical positions of our leaders in Congress have become so set and permitting so little room for reason and compromise that attaining office alone has become the all important issue.

This being the case, I began to speculate on what would happen if one party did, in fact, achieve its goal of total and permanent political domination with its philosophical planks being nailed firmly into its platform and the law of the land.  At the time I started this story, the Republican Party under George W. Bush came fairly close to being able to do this had it chosen to try for this domination.  This situation just made for a logical place to start my tale, and it has continued as such since then.  Of course, I could have written a similar novel with the Democrats in power, but timely relevance made the GOP my incumbent for Section 5.

Now, the question arises: could absolute power be achieved?  Yes, it can.  Had the GOP succeeded in re-interpreting Section 5, Article I of the Constitution as I suggest in my book, they could have developed an absolute control of the Congress.  I’ll leave it for you to read the story and see how this obscure clause could become the vehicle for political domination.  But, you’ll find out that, in fact, people in the past have tried to use it for political gain.  Fortunately, no one has succeeded … yet.

If there is a lesson to be gained from this story, it is that the American people have selected their president, representatives and senators to govern.  Governance is the art of solving real problems through means that can’t be solved elsewhere.  How far politicians can go in any particular direction towards solutions can be seen in the balance of power that has been given to them through the power of the vote.   If the balance of power is close, then caution is being called for.  However, in times of crisis, strong powers have been given.  We have seen this in the Civil War and the two World Wars.  Leaders were given trust to lead the nation back to peace.  When it was achieved, a political balance was restored that forced leaders to solve problems through compromise.

Compromise is a sloppy way of doing business.  It has been defined as achieving a solution that satisfies no one.  Doing so involves a clash of wills and ideas.  But, through the conflict, if compromise is pursued honorably, workable solutions for the commonweal can be achieved with room for further perfection later in time.  But, when the parties concerned are only interested in attaining absolute power, then tragedy can only loom on the horizon.