Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl

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Pink Elephants

November 02, 2006

Anyone else have the feeling that they're stuck in a ballgame that goes on forever? Get to the end of one extra inning and they tack on another. It's "sudden death" but no one scores. There's plenty of flailing and whooping and smacking of mud -- "You put dirty sex in your novels!" "You run racist ads!" "You're a coward!" "You're a warmonger!" "You lied!" "YOU lied!" "You lied first!" "You lied worst!" -- but it's like the movies: the cartoon character that gets flattened in one frame is up and running in the next; the actor who goes down in a hail of bullets in one film rises again to star in another. The important question isn't "Who will win?" but "What kind of education is the electorate getting?"

An article in the online Washington Post this morning quoted a bartender in Iowa's First Congressional District. "I just think politics is crooked," she said. "The rich pay to get what they want from the people in office. . . . It's like the Mafia, with laws. They get to run what they want, when they want. They don't mean nothing that they say."

"Like the Mafia, with laws." I'm going to remember that. It may be that the best-educated voters (and non-voters) are those who follow The Sopranos.

Of course I'm jaded. I'm 55 after all. This show has been in reruns for a very long time. I stopped paying close attention about two decades ago, and in recent years I haven't been watching at all. If Gerry Studds resurrects or another candidate worth working for appears on the scene, I figure one of my friends will let me know.

I haven't, however, totally given up hope. About six weeks ago I clipped four articles from the news sources I graze regularly. (That's anachronistic lingo for what I really did, because when everything's virtual you don't need scissors.) I've read them all several times since. Three of the stories were about Ann Richards, governor of Texas from 1991 to 1994, who died on September 13. Wrote Maura J. Casey in the New York Times on September 16:

What made Ms. Richards different was her decision to be forthright about the fact that she was a recovering alcoholic. She didn't hide it. "I like to tell people that alcoholism is one of my strengths," she said. She was right. Alcoholics know that seeds of healthy recovery grow from the need to mend their own flaws to stay sober, one day at a time. Ms. Richards faced her imperfections fearlessly, and that enabled others to be fearless, too, if only for a little while.

Just knowing that this woman survived and thrived and kicked butt all over Texas does my heart good. Read Molly Ivins's Remembering Ann Richards. If you're like me, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll wish you could have gone camping with the woman. In her memory I'm trying to do a little more to encourage fearlessness in others.

The fourth story I clipped isn't about Ann R., though it mentions her passing. "Struggle for Sobriety That Knows No Party Lines," by Mark Leibovich (New York Times, September 19, 2006), focuses on the relationship between Representative Jim Ramstad, Republican of Minnesota, who at the time the article was written had been sober for 25 years, and Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, who had been sober for four months. Taking my own inventory, I had to admit that it had been a very long time since I harbored a kind thought about a Republican or a Kennedy. I read: "When the Rhode Island Republican Party chairman called for Mr. Kennedy's resignation after his crash [the accident in May of this year that propelled him into treatment], Mr. Ramstad called it 'a slap in the face' to all recovering addicts." Wow, I thought. Wow.

Said Mr. Ramstad to the reporter: "If we could turn Congress into one big A.A. meeting, where people would be required to say what they mean and mean what they say, it would be a lot better Congress."

Wow wow wow. It hurts to even imagine it. A Congress where it was OK to admit that your life, and maybe administration policy, had become unmanageable? A Congress where everyone took his or her own inventory instead of everybody else's? A Congress that promptly admitted its screw-ups and made amends for them? A Congress that focused on principles, not personalities?

What would happen if the run-up to an election didn't resemble a sustained drunken brawl? What if we expected candidates "to say what they mean and mean what they say"? What if they actually did it? What if more elected officials could follow Ann Richards's example? What if, instead of relentlessly pointing out the imperfections of their opponents, they fearlessly faced their own imperfections -- and thus encouraged us to be fearless, "if only for a little while"?

Could we handle it?

 

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