1 Event- 2 Views- 3 Elections

As we look forward to 2012 and the election, I think it is important to look back. No, not at 2011, but at an event earlier that is still reverberating in our elections. And when it happened, nobody saw how it would affect our national outlook and have a great effect on our political system. The event? Hurricane Katrina. What no one could see was how we as a nation would look at our government afterward. And it isn't just that we look at our government one way, but how two camps have such a different view. One, which is held by the left and most of the center of America is that government had gotten ineffective, and the main culprit was President Bush. These people hold that government has many things that it can do for the people, but they must be done efficiently and with effective regulations. This camp sees that corporations, running rampant, pay for the government to tilt the scales in their favor, either by loosening or eliminating certain regulations or by having regulations enacted that limit competition and keeping taxes low for themselves. This camp voted for President Obama, and elected Democrats to majorities in both the House and the Senate in 2008. But this was just one point of view. The other was that government itself was the problem, and that the least government intrusion from Washington was the best, with the ideal being no federal government. This is the view of the far right, and some in the middle. And this camp voted in the Tea Party members into the House majority in 2010. And this brings us to now, and the 2012 election. Which camp will win this battle of different points of view and set the country on the path for the next few years? This is the question of 2012, and although jobs, foreign policy, monetary policy, entitlements and all the other topics of the day will be talked about, it is the view of the country, and the course it will take, that will be decided this election. And that makes the 2012 election a watershed event for America.