If you’d like a little inspiration for the long haul, take a look at U.S. Senator Mark Dayton’s (D. Minn) impassioned speech against the nomination of Condoleeza Rice:
http://dayton.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=230921&&
In it he outlines Rice’s — and the administration’s — pattern of deception on Iraq, and why it is corrosive to the American polity.

This pattern is being repeated on the Social Security issue. See the article in the Jan. 16 New York Times Magazine by Roger Lowenstein, A Question of Numbers