© 2007 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
For the life of me I do not understand how people can stand to run for local elective office and then, even more amazingly, serve. Besides campaigning being such hard and often lonely and thankless work, the campaigning and serving presents an opportunity to be criticized in ways not otherwise available to local citizens since they were in junior high school.
Anonymously in the local paper the office holders and candidates are slurred without regard to truth and without the ability to confront their accusers. Even the most thick-skinned citizens have to be bothered by the liberties anonymously taken with their good name.
More troubling to me is that, if candidates win, there are the long, tedious meetings that are important but long and tedious. At these meetings legions of local citizens sit in the front row and harrumph. They get their three minutes of remark time while elected officials sit and take it silently, though I notice sometimes their eyes betray them as if they got a mouthful of castor oil.
I am grateful that some people do run for office. We would not have a government without at least two choices for each contest. So to the candidates, I say, “Thank you.”
With early voting almost over and the Las Cruces Municipal Election next week, I even thank those candidates I would not vote for except with a loaded gun to my head. There is only one person I would like to see in office less than them. That is me. I do not have the temperament for both running and serving, so at election time I stand and applaud those who will run and serve.
Running for office is very problematic for me because, if you want to know what I think, just ask me. Even when I realize that someone disagrees with my opinion, I do not know any other way than to just say what I think. I am not politically correct by choice. In a word, I am completely unelectable. Thank God.
Perhaps it is my hyperactive mind, but I see people in city council meetings sit for hours and I wonder how they do it. Perhaps they have brains of custard or it is merely that they have far more patience than me. I regularly say, “Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now!”
Don’t vote if you don’t care
There are other jobs I also do not want. This being the good old
There are those people who want more people to vote regardless of whether those voters care who wins. How very stupid to be impressed with more numbers when those numbers do not represent people who care. This political correctness is wrong – that people should go vote even if they do not know anything about the candidates and have no opinion on the potential outcomes. In the last presidential election, on Election Day, someone asked who was running for president. This person was not kidding.
Something I think is at the core of the problem is those voter registration drives to get more people registered to vote. Yawn. The way to increase voter registration and participation is to get more people to care. You do not have to worry about registering people who care. They will get it done. They will also get to the polls if they care. The rest of the potential voters may register, but rarely vote. This is the tip of the “I-do-not-care iceberg.”
We have the government we want, collectively. Each candidate is a forum on the legitimate role of government in a free society. Some want to take the “free” out of society, some want to keep it there. I think the hardest part of these elections is the promises, the “read-my-lips” statements that are not worth used tissue paper once that last vote is counted.
In a town I used to live in the plumber was elected mayor. He drove around in a truck with a motto that said, “The only place a straight flush beats a full house.”
That was the extent of his recorded humor. Each meeting, he wound up talking plumbing, which was mildly interesting for ten minutes and then caused swelling of the cerebral cortex after that. The plumbing examples were memorable such as the time the mayor uttered, “You are installing an escutcheon solution here.” But I was still happy he was the mayor and I was not.
I hope the candidates who win will serve with fidelity, even if they do not know that word. Vote if you care, stay home if you do not.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.