Politics in rehab

By TAD BARTIMUS

As I prepare to vote I want to believe them both.

She promises to create more jobs, attract more businesses, commit more money to schools so teachers can replace 10-year-old textbooks. She believes in parks and protecting the environment. She says he's ineffective, incompetent. She's coming on strong, narrowing the gap.

He says he's put plenty of people back to work already, given teachers a raise and committed himself to education. He believes in parks and protecting the environment. He says she's lying. He's fighting back, trying to hang on.

Political campaigns have become like gall bladder surgery. First, you get sick to your stomach, then they take you on a long, cold ride under bright lights.

I listen to them both and shock myself with my cynicism. Oh yeah? Right! And I'm the tooth fairy. This, from the woman who, as a child holding her father's hand, stood for hours in freezing rain for a glimpse of candidate John F. Kennedy as his limousine went past. Whatever happened to faith in the system, idealism, belief in public service for its own sake?

It's easy to blame our loss of national innocence on Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, the Gulf War, Whitewater, Monica, an 8,000 Dow Jones, crack, $7 million-a-year baseball players, the gap between the haves and the have-nots. More likely it's because we don't pay attention. Holding elected officials accountable is hard work; 60 percent of us are too lazy to vote. All those great letters we write to our representatives while we're stuck in traffic? Nary a stamp ever gets licked. So we grouse and live with the consequences; mostly, they aren't pretty.

Political campaigns have become like gall bladder surgery. First, you get sick to your stomach, then they take you on a long, cold ride under bright lights. Experts perform a messy, painful procedure with a dicey prognosis. Finally, you wind up with scars and the bill. The only difference is that, with gall bladder surgery, you get anesthetic and don't wake up 'til it's over.

I don't know how to make politics more civilized and government more accountable. I hate going to public meetings that drone endlessly on, reading boring stories about hearings and budgets, writing protest letters when I catch public servants in disingenuous back-pedaling. But I'm even more fed up with politicians who go along to get along, who do what's expedient instead of what's right.

I know, as a voter in a democracy, that my responsibility as a citizen of a free country, no matter how onerous, is just that: my responsibility. If I don't like what's happening, it's up to me to change it. I've seen "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" a dozen times; I remember that poor Jimmy Stewart was going down the tubes until all those letter from the hinterlands poured into the Senate and saved him from his crooked peers. Bless you, Frank Capra, for giving me a celluloid antidote for my political malaise. Half a box of Kleenex and a bowl of buttered popcorn later, I admit to myself that one person can make a difference, that election reform -- politics in rehab -- starts with me.

I listen again to the candidate's pitch; as she moves on I stop her. Will she pledge to try and do such-and-such? "Oh yes, I'm all for it." Her reply sounds canned. Not good enough. She starts to turn away again; I take her hand and look her in the eye. "Do I have your word on that?" She looks back -- really sees me this time -- and says, "Absolutely."

Okay. You've got my vote. But be warned: if you don't live up to your promises you won't get it again.

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