Putting faith in a change of political leadership as the way to a life with our heads above water is like betting on a fish to help us drain the lake. We are drowning in expensive groceries, nearly $5-a-gallon gasoline, looking forward to cold homes this winter if we can make the mortgage payments, and we're constantly worried about whether or not our companies will cut our jobs. And much of it is because of politics. Whenever one party is in office, it is the other's perceived duty to make our lives as miserable as possible so we will want a regime change next time around. So, pretty much, there is always an entire set of politicians making our lives unbearable.

Let me ask you a question. In the latest financial debacle, who did the politicians bail out — institutions or people?

People are losing their homes because disreputable institutions found they could give mortgages to anyone and not worry about getting paid.

They made their money up front, and sold the mortgages to other companies who decided it was worth a risk. Those companies didn't get paid enough and went under, but instead of saying, "Hey, that was the risk," the government bailed them out through bankruptcies, and outright give-aways.

Why didn't they take the billions it will cost and reimburse the people for all the fees, costs, points, down payments, and the money they did pay before they lost their homes?

Don't hold your breath. It isn't going to happen, because politicians, who decide

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who gets the bailout, live in the murky water with the overpaid officers of those same institutions.

But there is a way out of this.

In the early 1950s the Portuguese invaded our happy Irish/Italian factory town and applied for our parents' jobs.

The shop owners were as happy as pigs in slop.

Owners paid the Portuguese less money for more work, and their families lived in poverty.

My father and the Donahue boys, who remembered "Irish need not apply," didn't like it.

Scrapper Jack told one of the new workers that the three Irishers would train the Portuguese on how to sidelast and bedlast. They were also told how much money they were supposed to be making.

Scrapper Jack was the fastest bedlaster in the shop, but while teaching, the work he could do for himself, his wife and his seven kids dwindled, and his pay envelope went from $45 a week to $28.

That week, my Uncle Connie showed up from Providence. The trunk of a '38 Plymouth can carry a lot of groceries, and today it did.

Then, my Uncle Jim showed up, and then Francis.

Father Carbery, himself a man of Skibereen, remembered his kinship to my father's family and showed up with some money to pay for heating oil.

I walked with my father to the neighbor's house one afternoon and he called our state representative, a man he went to school with.

He wanted to know "why you boys in Boston can't do something about these Portugee families who are being starved out?"

I remember the resignation when he lowered his voice and said to his Irish friend, "Well then, you've forgotten where you come from. " He told me later, his old school friend had told him he needed the money the businesses donated to get him elected, and he "couldn't go against them."

The company didn't mind my father teaching the new people how to work, but didn't like that he told them how much money they were supposed to be making, so they "black-balled" him.

But before I knew it, he had a job again. A different shoe shop. Same town. A man named Morris Share had hired him against the warnings from many of his fellow businessmen.

I asked my father how it happened and he said, "Morris is a Jew. We have a lot in common."

I didn't understand that for a long time. By the time I did, this is what I had learned.

If we wait for a politician to make our lives better it will be a long fruitless wait.

Politicians not only live in the lake, they are bottom feeders. They get elected on the real trickle-down effect, political donations from institutions that trickle down like fish food from the top, and they are not going to help eliminate their habitat.

We have to help ourselves.

We need to learn to swim together. Or drown.

What will keep us afloat is not a change in political leadership. What we need is family, community and religion.

John Hourihan is wire editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6207 or by e-mail at jhourihan@ctpost.com.