When Obama wanted to trim defense spending to save a little bit of money, the Republicans wailed and stomped their feet and said Obama was ruining everything.

I'm thoroughly convinced that if someone from either party came up with the brilliant solution to everything and can prove its validity, the other party would shoot it down because they were sore they didn't come up with it first.

These are our leaders, sure, but they're the leaders we elected.

The city of Allen Park has experienced a recent debt crisis of its own and, although it isn't out of the water yet, there's something to be said about how the citizens handled it.

It started in 2008 with the new mayor, a man I remember to have been elected by the citizens in a fervor and by a wide margin.

At the time, the city was in the black. It had lots of money to spend and invest. In 2009, the mayor was having talks with the director of a movie studio, because, the mayor and city council insisted, the director was very interested in coming to Allen Park. The city was to become the next Hollywood, the city was told, and thousands of jobs and an economic utopia would soon follow.

Now it should be brought up that Allen Park is not a big city. The 2010 census put the population at a little more than 28,000. The streets and the houses are uniform and quiet. At night you can hear the wind moving the dust around in the roads, and after the roar from the bars quiets down, even the cops have nothing to do.

When a drunk man stumbled into the music store I used to work at and started beating on cymbals and causing a ruckus, three police cars showed up to haul him off. If that seems like overkill, it's because it is.

The employee who called asked the cops if they didn't have anything better to do. They told him they didn't.

Even though I was 16 when the council and mayor were buzzing about the incoming movie studio, I still thought the whole thing was silly, and so did most of the people I talked to about it. Still, the matter was never put to a public vote and the city spent $30 million on the land (much more than it was appraised for).

I don't think anyone was very surprised when the studio quickly stopped paying its bills and moved out of the city, leaving Allen Park with land nobody wanted to buy.

With the budget surplus evaporated, the city wanted to save money by laying off the entire fire department. The citizens almost rioted in the city hall during a council meeting.

And now we come to the main point of the story: when the leaders, through poor decisions and monetary mismanagement, blew the money and drove the city deep into debt, what did the citizens do? They threw a temper tantrum and then they cleaned house. Every single city council member was turned out at the next election. The mayor resigned and did not rerun.

The party affiliation of the new council members doesn't matter. They want to do what's best for the city, and that's all that matters. I dare any serious politician to say to potential voters, "I may not always do what you want me to do, and I may not even always do what you think is right, but I can promise you that I will always try to do what's best for this country, our country."

Know what that is? It's political suicide. And right there is the problem with America. This hyperpluralistic pandering to individual groups to garner votes is what's ruining everything. This group won't vote for a candidate that's going to lower social security, while another group won't vote for someone who's pro-choice.

But guess what, folks? This is America. We aren't supposed to always get what we want: we're supposed to grit our teeth and get dirty and in the end do what needs to be done for the common good. And that will never get done unless people wise up and start demanding our leaders stop worrying about pleasing everyone and start worrying about doing the country some good.