barbaraz (05/17/82)
Since Oregon's primary is tomorrow and it's one of the first, and because I
have strong feelings about people informing themselves and voting, I will share
the following editorial with the net. Reply to the net, not to me.
>From *The Oregonian*, May 17, 1982, by Russell Sadler:
CONTEMPT FOR POLITICS ERODES SYSTEM'S BASE
Salem-You will see a lot of hand-wringing about apathetic voters if there is a
light turnout at Tuesday's primary election - but not from this pulpit. If
people are so unconcerned they don't want to bother studying the issues and
making the effort to vote, we are probably better off if they stay away from
the polls and leave the decisions to the rest of us.
The problem of low voter turnout is more serious than simple voter apathy.
The problem is the growing contempt for politics and politicians - a dangerous
development in a country that prides itself on its 200-year-old experiment
in self-government.
Politics is the process by which the governed choose their governors without
the aid of monarchs, dictators, armies or riots in the streets. Politics is
the way we resolve our differences without resorting to guns, bombs and
assassination.
One need only look at Poland, the Falklands, Afghanistan, El Salvador or
Nicaragua to see how fragile that experiment is and what happens when the
politics of self-government fails.
There is a difference between skepticism and contempt for politics. Skepticism
of blandishments served up by politicians probably has kept us relatively
free. Contempt is corrosive and self-defeating, eroding the one process we
have for reaching widely acceptable decisions about the rules we must all
live with.
People are failing to vote, not because they are apathetic, but because they
no longer accept the decisions of elected officials. There is a growing
contempt for those who are elected and a new unwillingness to accept the
laws they pass.
The word "politician," once a title of respect, has become an epithet.
Elected officials are dismissed as corrupt or windbags. The late Al Capp
captured the image when he created Dogpatch Senator Jack S. Fogbound in the
Li'l Abner comic strip. Fogbound's campaign slogan read: "There's no Jack S.
like our Jack S."
The intensity of this contempt has come as something of a shock to Oregon's
legislators and statewide officeholders, a relatively unjaded collection
brought up in the tradition of *noblesse oblige* [italics]. The negative
public attitude is scaring away people who would otherwise run for office
or accept appointments to boards and commissions.
Add the business community's well-known distaste for public controversy, and
it is not hard to understand why the quality of legislators is deteriorating
and why businessmen are underrepresented in the House and the Senate. They
have decided to leave the job to somebody else.
There is a small but growing number of people who are no longer willing to
live by the consensus fashioned by the political process. While a renewal
of religious faith is probably a positive sign, there are extremists who
intend to use the secular law to impose their religious doctrine on
everyone else. Some of these people are actively ridiculing the constitutional
barriers designed to protect us from this kind of abuse. This decline in
tolerance has serious political implications.
It contributes to the growing view that government no longer reflects the
view of the public, that politicians are more beholden to the political
action committees that finance their campaigns instead of their party or
their constituents. Libertarians, the fastest-growing political party in
Oregon, view government as an enemy to be contained, not as a friend whose
help to seek. Libertarian anti-government bias is so strong and their views
are based on such radical reinterpretations of our history it is hard to
decide whether these people are extremely conservative or closet anarchists.
The Libertarians and fundamentalists are among those who have less and less
in common with the people of more traditional political persuasions who
dominate the Legislature - people brought to politics in the tradition of
the late Richard L. Neuberger, whose 1954 book "Adventures in Politics"
chronicled the legislativve careers of Neuberger and his wife, Maurine, and
motivated many capable people to seek public office and accept government
appointments.
The consensus that held government together for the last 40-odd years is
crumbling, and no new consensus is emerging to take its place. No leader
is emerging to fashion a new one.
Potentially capable leaders are discouraged from running for office by the
contempt their peers and the public hold for politics, and a growing number
of people stay away from the polls because they are unwilling to be
associated with the results. Whatever else that is, it is not voter apathy.
*****************end of editorial.
To Oregonians: vote tomorrow. Your future may depend on it.
Barbara Zanzig