The sensible center has a champion.
Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm has declared that he is a candidate for the Presidency. He will run for the Reform Party nomination.
This is not what I had in mind when I wrote of my fondest pipedream today -- a legitimate, viable, credible, and truly independent presidential candidate. I dreamed of someone who would refuse all offers from entrepreneurs tainted by personal ambition or character defects, whether they issued from people corrupted and entrenched in the decadent political system under which we currently suffer, or from the convoluted mind of a conflicted, selfish, manipulative tycoon like Ross Perot. I dreamed of someone with unquestioned public recognition, someone who came with a ready-made high favorability rating, and a built-in guarantee of non-stop and largely favorable publicity, at least at the outset.
That was my dream. Reality is not like that.
Reality tells us that goals are not meant to be accomplished in their perfection, entire. Goals are the highest peak that may never be quite reached, and they are the visions held in our hearts, all the more compelling and inspiring for their intrinsic impossibility. The high achiever always finds a balance between perfection on the one hand, and total compromise to the point of surrender on the other. And it is where that person stands his ground between those two poles which defines more nearly than perhaps anything else who he is, and why he is.
Richard Lamm, a true iconoclast and cage-rattler, has accepted two quixotic challenges, -- the challenge offered by an eccentric and wayward millionaire to fight for the right on a playing field tilted by the owner and by rules biased and arbitrary at best, deceitful and cowardly at worst, and the challenge offered to an idealist who sees our supposedly democratic government so paralyzed by a sick political process that burning pressing needs of our country -- political reform, debt reduction, entitlement reform, health reform -- are swept under the rug or shoved aside as the merest impertinence.
Yet quixotic as this quest would appear to be, it does not start out with entirely negative omens. For years, like bubbles emerging and exploding from a seething cauldron, politically savvy and sophisticated figures on our political scene have dared to touch, however gingerly, the fresh and inviting air of independent politics, only to scurry back to the nauseous stew of Republicrat incumbency. From John Anderson to Colin Powell to Bill Bradley to Lowell Weicker, credible figures on our political scene have recognized the need and, more importantly, the potential for a fresh, independent, uncorrupted political movement. But always in the end most shrank from taking the leap into the unknown. And yet, nature abhors a vacuum. And with a need and a potential as great as the independent political option represents, it was inevitable that some credible legitimate figure would eventually see the pros as outweighing the cons, that some legitimate leader would be the first on that shiny and almost untouched dance floor.
And now that has happened. A man who recognizes our current political system as enshrining legalized bribery, a man who recognizes that stealing from our children represents the greatest moral challenge of our time, has come forward to challenge the political idiocies and comfortable lies which our Republicrat duopoly continues to foist upon us.
As I said earlier, the circumstances are not ideal. They never are in reality. This man is given to blunt, even insensitive statements at times. He enjoys name recognition which measures barely a fraction of that enjoyed by more visible possibilities like Bradley or Weicker. He has chosen to enter the competition in an arena controlled by an egotistical, selfish, and self-aggrandizing publicity hound, Ross Perot, who is no stranger to election processes which smell. In fact, one battle-scarred veteran of the second incarnation of Perot's militaristic machine, United We Stand America, has written eloquently on the Web of the twisted, circuitous methods employed by Perot's hired staff while conducting another "election" in New York's UWSA group.
But a political journey, whether to emancipation or voting enfranchisement or independence, must have a starting-point. And there is little doubt in my mind that if, through a happy confluence of circumstances, Governor Lamm should do the unlikely, and win the presidential nomination of the most visible response we have today to the public longing for an alternative to the current corrupt political duopoly, that response being Ross Perot's Reform Party, then the political deck for this democracy may indeed be completely reshuffled.
And high time too. We are seeing our democracy die before our eyes. I am not saying our economic system is on the verge of collapse, though certainly we are today celebrating growth rates that thirty years ago would unquestionably alarmed us. I am not saying that there are organized revolutionary subversive forces on the verge of overthrowing our government, though certainly the rise of the militia movement affords us a glimpse of revolutionary tendencies which have long lain dormant in our land. No, what threatens to kill our democracy today is cynicism, blind, kneejerk cynicism and ridicule, directed at any and all who offer themselves democratically as leaders to a confused and pessimistic nation. Right now we know that our electorate holds politicians in contempt. Our government is not trusted to do the right thing. Our leaders are not trusted to do the right thing. If our populace were asked in a poll whether our political system has betrayed them, I have no doubt that most would answer yes. And so our system of democratic republicanism, the bedrock on which what Senator Bradley calls our civil society rests, is fast losing its legitimacy. Next to go may very well be the traditionally shared notion of the legitimacy of law itself. After that, the belief in the legitimacy of the very foundation of our existence, the belief that we are all one nation, indivisible, may crumble. And without faith in our legitimacy as a nation, there is little left for us to see in our future as a country, and little relevance remaining for us in the role of citizen.
Already there are signs in our country that the relevance of nationhood, of citizenship, are no longer clear to millions of our people. We have one of the lowest turnout rate in our elections of any industrialized democracy. We suffer from a chronic lack of interest in, or even knowledge of, the vital, central issues that will determine our future. Ask most people whether or not chronic deficits or a debt that staggers the imagination has any direct effect on their lives or their future and one may simply get a look of amusement or pity. Ask people who they admire among our elected leaders and many will laugh at the very idea of putting the words "admire" and "elected leaders" in the same sentence.
In short, our country no longer enjoys the sort of healthy skepticism that is vital to an informed electorate. We have progressed far beyond that; we have arrived at a point in our history where, instead of healthy skepticism, we have embraced ignorant cynicism, in a nihilistic and masochistic orgy of deconstructionism and apathy. And at the center of this rush to the unthinking scoff is the profound belief that all our elected leaders are more interested in the next election than the next generation, that all our elected leaders are more skilled in the art of the pander than the art of the leader, that only by uncovering secret motivations shall we ever know what really makes our politicians tick.
It is in the midst of this faithless bitter era that Governor Lamm's candidacy makes so much sense. As a spokesman who would clean out the Augean stables of our political process, as a truth-teller who wants to "touch the fire," as he puts it, of the verities which the Republicrat machine will not utter, the looming and unavoidable financial crunch that awaits us as we retire the baby-boomers, Richard Lamm will show the American people, and, more importantly, the political establishment, that an anti-panderer, a man who bluntly promises to utter no b.s., can lead the country towards a more positive sense both of its own democracy, and of the people who would lead her in that democracy, than a hundred unbelieved promises and a thousand personal smears could ever hope to do.
So, what do you think, folks? Is this my most unrealistic pipedream of all? Or have my words led you to think seriously about this plain-spoken kayaker from the Southwest? Wherever those words have led you, please let me know. You are cordially invited to fill out the boxes below and express yourself. Bear in mind that I reserve the right to quote statements sent to me in this manner, in whole or in part, in subsequent Musings. Also, be sure to indicate in the Title of your Message the name of the Musings, "Reality," to which you are responding. Thank you.
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