On Local Government

The great Brown hope

It would be amusing to watch the jabbering heads on television speak about what meaning they take from the recent elections if it weren’t clear that they have little or no idea what they are talking about.

Over the past few years, I have spoken with people all around the country who, they claim (and I believe them), are truly independent voters. They do vote. However, they never feel they get the opportunity to vote for the people who would truly represent them. They occupy the political “black hole” known as the middle of the road.

In representative politics, it is an empty zone. It is a place where all fear to enter because nothing good, meaning elective office, can come from it.

For the middle of the road voter, each election has been the choice of two options, neither of which represents their way of thinking. Being dedicated voters, they choose one. Inevitably, that person fails them so they try the other way. That fails as well. And, the frustration continues to rise with no opportunity to do anything about it.

This is not to say there have not been opportunities. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor in a recall election driven by voter frustration with the last economic downturn, he was seen as the “independent soul” who didn’t need anyone’s money and would chart his own course.

We all know how that turned out. But, what wasn’t as easily seen was how disappointed those in the middle were about what many of them thought of as the best chance for their ideas and principles  to take root. The success of Governor-elect Jerry Brown last week was due, in good part, to the middle’s negative reaction to yet another rich “independent soul” offering salvation from “politics as usual.”

Around the country, people tell me how they have seesawed back and forth from party to party hoping for something good to come of it. They have seen only the increasing polarization of those in office, representing only the edges of the political spectrum…certainly not them.

This search for moderation is not limited to the United States.  However, other countries, particularly those with parliamentary systems, have dealt with the issue by not giving any of the major political parties majority status, thus forcing coalitions to develop where concessions need to be made. Not having such as system, we are forced to endure the “politics of the edge” as the American standard.

Those of us feeling disenfranchised in this way will not give up voting and hoping. We hope Governor Brown, the first in more than two decades to have any local government experience, will approach our issues from a different direction than we have seen from recent leaders.

Perhaps he, rather than the hoped for previous “savior,” will deliver. We live in hope. ER