I have long had it in my head that most politicians came from the legal profession, but then a friend sent me this...while it is true that the Republicans lack leadership and a real "movement-based" backbone, at least they have this going for them.....

The Democrat Party has  become the Lawyers' Party.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers.  Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers.  John Edwards, the other  former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer, and so is his wife,  Elizabeth.  Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school  (although Gore did not graduate).  Every Democrat vice presidential  nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.  Look  at the Democrat Party in Congress:  the Majority Leader in each house is  a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different.  President Bush and  Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen.  The leaders of  the Republican Revolution were not lawyers.  Newt Gingrich was a history  professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and, Dick Armey was an economist.     House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a  lawyer.  The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart  surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?   Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the  Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in  197 6.  The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work.   The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men  who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or  who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.

The Lawyers' Party  sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want,  as the enemies of America .  And, so we have seen  the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party,  grow.

Against whom do Hillary  and Obama rail?  Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals,  manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers,  and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

This is the  natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers  solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the  American people.  Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win  lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers  always parse language to favor their  side.


Confined to  the narrow practice of law, that is fine.  But it is an awful way to  govern a great nation.  When politicians as lawyers begin to view some  Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of  the leg al system in our life becomes all-consuming.   Some Americans  become "adverse parties" of our very government.  We are not all  litigants in some vast social class-action suit.  We are citizens of a  republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and  from lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by  judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all  parts of our once private lives.   America has a  place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast  and unchecked.  When the most important decision for our next presi dent  is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law  in America is too big.  When  lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means,  as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of  lawyers in America is too great.  When  House Democrats sue America  in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do  to us, then the role of litigation in America has become  crushing.

We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change,  real reform, or real hope in America . Most Americans know that  a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine  unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789.  Most  Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the  heels of our defenders.  Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and  judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of  enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that  change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely  dictate American society and business.  Perhaps Americans will see that  hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams  nourished by hard work.  Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that  more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.