Mornings are a time for reflection. They allow us to take full advantage of the panic attacks that jolt us from our sleep most nights, as we subconsciously calculate the enormity of our debts, and the minuscule balancing mechanism of our pay. It’s tough not to ask how we got here, and even if we did ask we’d likely see an image of every politician that has previously seduced us out of our financial security with ads purchased with our own money. The real question should be how we find our way out of this financial abyss.
The Tea Party seems to think the abyss can be dissolved by electing politicians whose lifetime polling numbers were so bad that even unlimited wealth couldn’t get them elected dog catcher. We’ve already tried electing candidates with no talent and even less cognition, so it might be time to try something more innovative, like drafting people who have no political aspirations, and a history of success across all industries and professions. What would that be like?
Let’s think about this for a few minutes. We all know a few people that we respect above the flotsam that surround us. If individual communities were to gather up what little strength remains in them to discuss which “non-politicians” they might want running their towns, counties and states, there would likely be a very new grouping of “non-candidates” to choose from on an election slate.
Now, we’re not going to be able to talk our family doctors and firefighters into taking a leave from their imperative roles without some angling and a call to public duty, but wouldn’t the people we choose actually feel some responsibility for saving themselves as well as those who choose them to sort this mess out? I think many of them would be honored by this recruitment, so why not try it?
What precisely do we have to lose, other than the status quo that has already wrung every dollar out of our threadbare pockets?
The devil is always in the details, but a “true Tea Party” would be one that recruits common citizens, not one that self-aggrandizes the lower rungs of the political elite. The recruitment of our most talented citizens would be a true revolution, readily accomplished by forming “write in” campaigns on each ballot. This would be an infectious movement that would lead to actually speaking to one another in the coffee shops, workplaces, churches, parks, movie theatres and grocery stores about who we need to recruit to get us out of this deepening mess.
On so many levels, the pollution we’re now seeing in the Gulf of Mexico is analogous to what we’ve been watching for years in the political realm. The gushing pollutant of “excess” has been bleeding our dilapidated economy, while our politicians take on the role of BP, pointing fingers at everyone but themselves.
Try to imagine for a minute how enjoyable it would be to recruit anyone you wanted to deal with BP right now. Would you send President Barack Obama? Doubtful, I know. How about sending that incredibly smart engineer from your last job? Better yet, how about sending your primary care physician, who has been battling insurance companies for years while trying to keep a medical practice alive? You get the picture — normal people acting as true heroes in a time when heroes are few and far between.
We all know that something new has to happen to halt the spiral of this self-imposed descent into the fiscal abyss. Why don’t we use each other as resources and heroes at a time when both are absent from the political process?
Let’s start channeling the true Samuel Adams (and not the beer) while there’s still time.
John D. Rockefeller is a nonprofit development consultant in Camden.