Notes on the upcoming political season

The season approaches when our national discussion will once again turn to the relative sainthood of our would-be federal leaders. And shadowed close by, in my own community in the fair city of Los Angeles, we will be able to choose a new mayor. This political season appears at both levels with time-honored tradition, festivities and picnics everywhere, yet I react to its approach with growing fatigue and irritation.

Why? Am I running for office, so that I have to sweat every little quirk in a typically quirky conversation? No, I’m not running for office- and I’m not “in with the in-crowd,” if you know what I mean- and have no actual use for attaching my free-floating American angst to the great battles of the day. At the risk of psychoanalyzing my apathy (yes, in my youth I had a three-legged collie), I’ll just say that it isn’t so much apathy as, well…caring too much. It’s the same thing that happened to me when, on the way back from a Dodger game in which “we” had ignominiously lost, I had to ask my sulking self, “Why are you investing emotional energy in this? It’s just a damn baseball game, get over it!” Did I mention that this happened in 1969, not last week?

It was in that same year that I cast my first and last vote during the casting of which I believed that I was expressing a sort of influence on the government. That vote was in favor of Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic anti-war incumbent, for whom I had cheered in Columbus Square in San Francisco, against the warmonger Republican Barry Goldwater. (Ah, youth!). I dropped Democrats, Dodgers and Republicans within two years of each other. Whether that made me a secular humanist, well, I’m still working that out.

Anyway, the story’s not over. Like millions of my fellow baby-boomers, I continue to vote. It’s just a natural progression from following the news, a popular pastime with retirees. We do a lot of reading between the lines, that sort of thing. It’s engaging because the media really do offer you an endlessly fascinating cascade of sometimes credible and usually ominous news. One day I opened my paper to find that the medical plan that’s folded into my teacher pension is the most corrupt thing anyone’s ever heard of, and people are shouting, “By golly, we’re a’gonna shut this place down if’n we don’t get our rightful money back!” Like a tortured Steinbeck character I cry, “That’s me they’re screamin’ at, Ma! Me’n the union! They’se out to break us, Ma!” (unfortunately of course, the union is itself in thrall to the forces of cupidity and sloth, marring this otherwise motivational story).

So I vote, just to feel on top of things, and it adds a pleasant chore to my morning. The icing on the cake is that my voting station in the San Fernando Valley is at the high school where I taught. Aside from meditations on the influence I may or may not be exerting by completing a ballot, I bump into old colleagues and we joke about how no one votes except geezers who are afraid that their old high school civics teacher is watching. It’s got everything but a pickle jar.
But it’s not my mission here to denigrate the system any further than the situation merits.

Concerning candidates for next mayor of our City of the Angeles, or those at the federal level who wish to try against Obama’s seemingly invincible shield, I will read newspaper articles about your positions and gossip with my friends about you on the condition that you answer this question honestly: Why do you want the job? No one is saying that the only reason you want it is so you can line your pockets, be famous and a sort of rock star at a surprisingly advanced age- what’s wrong with those things anyway? But please answer me this: in addition to enjoying the obvious benefits of office, what else is on your mind? Are you, for instance, going to have an impact on public education? If so, what exactly will that impact be, how will its implementation unfold on schools, how will it be funded, does it have any chance of becoming policy?

As an old debate coach, I know I’ve just put myself in a defensive position where my opponent can claim, “Candidates do explain all those things. You just never listen!”

To which I retort: most policy speeches appear to be written by English teachers who couldn’t sell their screenplay and who are about to be automated out of a job by software that recycles phrases like “We won’t accept second best!” and “The time is now!”, so what’s to listen to? I’m sure it would be different to have a one-on-one conversation with a candidate.

One imagines it would be highly reasoned dialogue, if rushed and left a bit fuzzy at the edges.

But candidates can’t give each of us quality time. They have to talk to all of us at once. That’s where I want to see the improvement.
Let’s discuss these things further. Hope to see you at the polling booth! (I may just bring a pickle jar).

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Doug Lasken is a retired 25 year veteran of the Los Angeles Unified School System. Reach him through his blog at: http://laskenlog.blogspot.com/

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