By J.C. Watts

Raise your hand if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired of people talking about change, but things staying the same.

When I think of change, I always think it should mean making things better.

As we kick off the new year, many people around the world are making resolutions to change some aspect of their lives, be it kicking a habit, losing weight, paying off debt, further educating themselves, volunteering their talents, or simply being a better person.

We even saw an entire presidential campaign in 2008 built around the word “change.”

Whenever we see or hear discussions of change, we should always peel the onion and see what it really means. We should never go into our quest for change in a shallow way, or with our eyes wide shut.

If we go into our quest for change with our eyes wide open, we discover two things: We have to know what change actually means and what we’re changing, and we have to realize that real change is difficult.

It’s interesting that in politics, when you hear folks talk about change, it’s not always about making things better. It’s usually about change that will protect the status quo.

Even today, our elected officials in Washington are trading their votes for more pork for their home states – digging themselves deeper into the status quo.

Truth be told, the attitude among politicians usually is “if I can get mine, forget about change.” Even with a new Republican or Democrat administration, or a new majority in Congress, change is usually only cosmetic.

Remember when then-candidate Barack Obama said he would shine the light of day via C-SPAN on the health care bill negotiations and on pork barrel spending? Well, he has not kept that promise, because while administrations and majorities in Congress change, the process and culture remain the same.

Statistics show that less than 60 days into a new year, 80 percent of people who made resolutions, break them. Why? Because change is difficult.

If you resolve to lose weight, but after about three weeks, decide, “I’ve got to have my chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and cream gravy, green beans and hot buttered dinner rolls on Sunday after church,” change is not sure to come in your life.

Others determine it’s just too time-consuming to go to the gym after work, and we’re too mentally and physically exhausted in the evenings, and we need our rest too much to get up an hour earlier in the morning to exercise.

By Jan. 21, we are right back to our old, overweight fat selves, and our resolutions are out the window.

Change is indeed difficult.

We may resolve to be better people, but then we’re faced with a circumstance where we have to turn the other cheek. Turning the other cheek in politics is a misnomer. In politics, the policy is to “”do it to them before they do it to you.”

Change is difficult. Especially in the tradition-laden, power-packed, hard scrabble world of politics.

Unfortunately, few politicians who get elected can really follow-through with their vow to change things in Washington. I believe George W. Bush really thought he and his administration could change the culture of Washington. Sadly, at the end of the day, we saw much of the same old same old.

President Obama campaigned and got elected on an agenda of change, yet after a year in the White House, it’s the same old same old. Democrat policies of taxing and spending rule the day.

It doesn’t matter if the administration is Democrat or Republican. It doesn’t matter who is in the majority in Congress. The motivation may well be to change or impact the culture for the better. After three months in power, the motivation flips from change to protecting my deal, my turf, and my brand.

Unfortunately, this is what politics has become: Protecting my deal, my brand, and sometimes using just flat out nastiness to meet one’s goals.

It was once suggested to former Oklahoma state senator Gene Stipe that we should take the politics out of politics. His reply was “then it wouldn’t be politics.”

It will take more than words to effect real change in Washington. The bottom line is, it will take the change in the hearts and minds of our leaders before we can see change in the processes and results of our government.

Happy New Year, everyone. Hope you haven’t already broken those New Year’s resolutions!

J.C. Watts is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e-mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com