American voters' mid-life crisis is shaking things up

America is having a mid-life crisis.

It started in the 1990s when we began buying every manifestation of conspicuous consumption. Today we're clinging to our iGadgets, lamenting that we are grossly obese, hopelessly in debt, threatened with the loss of our income and retirement security, ignored by our friends and taunted by the kid door. We feel sorry for ourselves and unloved.

I don't just mean individually - although that's certainly an apt characterization of many of us - but collectively as part of the national psyche. Our federal, state and local government budgets have ballooned out of control, and we'll never pay off the debt in our lifetimes, even at triple the tax rates. We've added national health care to the cost drivers because we won't take personal responsibility. Our investment markets tanked, and we bailed out the banks with Monopoly money.

The cost of all these decisions is killing the economy. One in 10 of us are unemployed; one in seven in some cities; nearly one of every two if you're a young black male. Prisons are one of our few growth industries. It seems like no other nation particularly cares for our foreign policy. Afghanistan, for gad's sake, is making rude gestures at us when we turn our back!

It happens to nations "of a certain age."

The answer to our travails?

If we just do something radical and extreme - buy a sports car, bungee jump, sky dive, quit our job to write a novel or . . . heck, overthrow Congress - we'll feel better about ourselves, and our problems will magically disappear!

In election contests around the nation and in Central Pennsylvania, we're seeing voters who want to ditch elected officials with whom they have worked for decades in favor of new, bolder and sometimes more extreme replacements.

This is a bipartisan mid-life meltdown.

MoveOn.org is attacking incumbent Democrats for opposing health care and "card check," while the tea party is attacking Republicans who supported the stimulus and bank bailouts.

In some cases there are truly irreconcilable differences in the relationships between incumbent lawmakers and their constituencies. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter's been at odds with Pennsylvania voters in both parties for years.

But the challenges to other incumbent lawmakers are new. Clout, experience, seniority and symbiosis between politicians and their core constituencies mean little in 2010. "Those earmarks you gave us over the last 20 years? Shame on you! You should have known they were bad for us!"

And our mid-life crisis is manifested in new jealousies. "Don't pretend you weren't sometimes flirting and voting with the other side of the aisle. I watched you do it."

This piece goes to press at noon on Pennsylvania's Primary Election Day, so I don't know the outcomes, but neighboring congressmen here in the midstate, Republican Todd Platts and Democrat Tim Holden, are both facing primary challengers because some in their party don't think they're extreme enough, not ideologically pure enough. This is not to say their intra-party challengers, Mike Smeltzer and Sheila Dow Ford, aren't talented and qualified candidates. But such challenges were unheard of in the past.

This is not a Pennsylvania phenomenon. We're waiting to learn the fate of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. She's facing an onslaught from the MoveOn.org-backed Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. In 2004, U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah was re-elected by defeating the state's attorney general by a margin of 68 percent to 29 percent. A few weeks ago, Bennett came in third among seven Republicans vying for the party's nomination at its annual convention. Lincoln and Bennett have both run afoul of the more extreme elements of their respective parties. Lincoln provoked ire from more liberal Democrats for her opposition to the health care bill and card check. Bennett irked conservative Republicans when he voted against a ban on flag burning.

Not all the incumbents under fire are being dumped without cause or by more extremist candidates. Democrat U.S. Rep. Alan Mollo han of West Virginia was challenged in his primary from the right for supporting the health care "reform" bill, but more importantly his ethical problems were probably an even bigger cause of his defeat. Allegations of impropriety swirled around Pennsylvania's late U.S. Rep. lack Murtha and current Pennsylvania congressman Paul Kanjorski, who faces a primary fight today.

I'm not suggesting that voters are required to embrace their elected officials "until death do us part." Our democratic system is designed for regular competition among candidates about policies, ideas and commitment to a shared vision of our community, state and nation. I am simply observing that if we're dissatisfied with our lives as a middle-aged nation and want to put some zest back into America and Pennsylvania, we also need to look at ourselves. Many of our challenges are of our own making.

[Author Affiliation]

David W. Patti is the president and chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Business Council in Harrisburg. E-mail him at dpatti@pabusinesscouncil.org.