This has been a banner year for political scandal, though it is evident we’ve just exposed a small part of the sleazy iceberg masquerading as politics in Washington, D.C.

We began with the Abramoff lobby scandal and then slid quickly down into the cesspool with a cast of characters that should be relegated to the rogue’s gallery on the post office wall, like Scooter Libby, Duke Cunningham, Robert Ney, Mark Foley. A case can be made that these are only the few dumb/unlucky enough to get caught!

In 1797, George Washington said “few men have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder” and I suspect that will always be true. But after a year like 2006, rational thought led me to believe this was the year we could replace typical more-of-same candidates with politicians with fresh ideas worthy of our votes. Virtue aside, I looked around for another instrument to gauge whether a candidate should represent me in D.C. and settled on stupidity.

Don’t get me wrong, as I am not trying to be funny. But there are certain problems of such enormity that unless they are approached intelligently, they could become crises capable of ending life as we know it.

These problems are known by both mainstream parties and their candidates. They then refuse to see the obvious and do what’s necessary to fix them.

Health care is an example. Any industry that rewards all the participants for raising rates is a recipe for disaster. In health care, why would physicians, drug companies and the medical support community not continue to raise rates when they pass them on to consumers through the insurance companies? And why would the insurance industry have a problem with this as long as they can raise premiums? There is no reason to cap costs when everyone involved makes more money.

Our current system works as long as people can shift their health care costs over to company-provided insurance policies. Fewer and fewer people can afford private policies anymore. With unions becoming impotent dinosaurs and companies paying more attention to the bottom line and their stockholders than their employees, fewer are offering their workers insurance.

Crunch the numbers and it is obvious our system is not working. Within our lifetimes, only the wealthy will be able to afford health care. A single payer system bordering on socialism is the only way out of this mess ,and any candidate not able to see this is not bright enough to be representing me.

Another problem is Iraq, Peak Oil and the future of the dollar. These three interwoven problems threaten America’s economic future like nothing else.

We have to ask ourselves if the invasion of Iraq was the first currency war. Was it for oil or against the Euro? And will Peak Oil become the death knell for the American century and our industrial civilization?

The notion that Iraq was invaded to prevent the development of weapons of mass destruction, combat terrorism, or even liberate a country from a violent dictator has long been discredited. For our government to continue this line of bull discredits us in the eyes of the world.

The only rationale for intervening in Iraq was for control of the oil fields and the means by which oil is traded in global markets. To arrive at this is to look at and understand the obvious.

The crucial shift in U.S. monetary policy away from the gold standard to becoming the monopoly currency for worldwide oil sales effectively enabled us to dominate world trade. It also empowered multinational corporations to a level of financial and political power greater than most nations. To upset this will cause such severe worldwide financial calamity that we’ll look at the Great Depression as the good old days.

Throw Peak Oil into the mix and you get the picture. What we need to do is begin an honest dialogue: The war has been nothing more than a resource and oil currency war. Only then will we be able to face, instead of postpone, the inevitable catastrophic financial and energy meltdown that may well trigger the end of the world as we know it.

Anyone who has not been able to see this has no right representing me in Washington, or anywhere, for that matter. Then that’s it — you’re too stupid to hold office — and outta here!

Without an immediate change in governance, what has become known as the American century, the American Experiment, the American Miracle, will end. For us to have any chance to avoid this, there has to be honesty from the top down, so decisions can be made from the grass roots up. Unfortunately, this will not happen unless we demand that our leaders face up to today’s problems honestly and with intelligence.

Don’t count on it this year.

(Lydecker lives in Napa.)