Politics should be as calm as this year’s hurricane season

Hooray! The 2015 hurricane season is over for Louisiana this week.

And it was a calm season for storms, to say the least, but it was preceded by a very nasty political season in statewide elections.

Consider the disturbances that came over our television sets through advertisements and other means of communication about how incapable some of the candidates were to hold office if elected. We would classify the 2015 elections as bringing the most disturbing political storms ever to come our way.

Anyhow, we’re happy to note that Mother Nature was on our side.

Only one of nature’s storms got into the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Bill, which made landfall in Texas shortly after forming. It was one of 11 named storms this year with only four of them becoming hurricanes and two of them becoming major storms with wind speeds above 111 mph or higher.

The average over 30 years has been 12 named storms a year with six of them becoming hurricanes and three of them major each year. Hurricane Joaquin, however, did raise somewhat of a ruckus along the east coast this year.

But except for Bill next door in Texas, Louisiana was somewhat lacking stormy winds during this 10-year anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita which significantly shook the atmosphere of Louisiana back in 2005.

However, don’t breathe too easily.

Reports are we may be in line to get the second strongest El Nino on record this winter. The strongest El Nino so far was in 1982-83 during which we had widespread flooding in the southern states.

As for the political season, we hope Louisiana’s election processes proceed much more peacefully in the future. This year’s gubernatorial election campaigns contained too much negativity to satisfy our democratic processes.

Now that he has won, Governor-elect John Bell Edwards seems to be open-minded in the way he proceeds in office which is the way a candidate in our political system should be. We are hoping Democrats and Republicans can get together in the best way during the next four years.

Now that the election is over, they should get rid of their quibbling and join forces to work together for the betterment of our state. And if they do, they will be re-elected next time. That is what the political parties are supposed to be aiming for, not grumbling about what party is the right party.

They need to decide on how the different sides of the political spectrum can join forces to bring better government to Louisiana. It will benefit both parties and the entire State of Louisiana.

In other words, let’s follow the path of our hurricane season that was calm indeed this year. And let’s hope our political seasons can follow such harmonious paths in the future.