To the Editor:
“Washington’s broken!”  That’s a fairly common observation made by many these days.  Sadly, it’s true.
The so-called Super Committee provides the latest and most disturbing evidence of the degree of its “broken-ness.”
With the country’s troubles at hand, Americans should reasonably be entitled to the assurance that the very best talent there is would be assigned to the task of solving our problems. The Super Committee failed! It simply quit.  And it admitted its failure. This should be recorded as one of the most tragic, shameful and disgraceful events in American history.
Surely, solutions exist to deal effectively with the many dilemmas we now face, solutions that require intellect, imagination and new thinking to evolve, plus a large measure of courage, perseverance, accommodation and, yes, sacrifice to implement. A key question is, “How did the Super Committee dare to give up?”
I’m in the middle of reading Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Crusade in Europe,” which is filled, cover to cover, with far more insurmountable and critical problems than we face today.  But consider the quality of that leadership, a then-obscure Eisenhower and many others, who worked cooperatively with him to bring about a total and decisive victory from the feeble, impotent state we found ourselves in 1941.
But those men didn’t quit when the going got tough, seemingly hopeless at times.  Indeed, the bleaker the prospects, the greater the perseverance, the effort – and they never gave up!
Is it possible that the skill, determination, imagination, ingenuity, perseverance, courage and leadership that it took to mobilize this nation and its allies to wrest unconditional surrender from a powerful Axis have vanished? I really don’t believe so, but we have to find the right people and, regrettably, none are in Washington today who are able (or willing?) to fix its “broken-ness.”
As citizens, our duty is clear: be exceedingly careful about whom we elect (hire) as public servants, at all levels.
– Bill Wuehrmann, Tryon