From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:CAD:teklabs!tekmdp!barbaraz Newsgroups: net.general Title: American Politics Article-I.D.: tekmdp.1215 Posted: Mon May 17 16:43:43 1982 Received: Thu May 20 02:06:17 1982 Reply-To: p!barbaraz Since Oregon's primary is tomorrow and it's one of the first, and because I have strong feelings about people informing themselves and voting, I will share the following editorial with the net. Reply to the net, not to me. >From *The Oregonian*, May 17, 1982, by Russell Sadler: CONTEMPT FOR POLITICS ERODES SYSTEM'S BASE Salem-You will see a lot of hand-wringing about apathetic voters if there is a light turnout at Tuesday's primary election - but not from this pulpit. If people are so unconcerned they don't want to bother studying the issues and making the effort to vote, we are probably better off if they stay away from the polls and leave the decisions to the rest of us. The problem of low voter turnout is more serious than simple voter apathy. The problem is the growing contempt for politics and politicians - a dangerous development in a country that prides itself on its 200-year-old experiment in self-government. Politics is the process by which the governed choose their governors without the aid of monarchs, dictators, armies or riots in the streets. Politics is the way we resolve our differences without resorting to guns, bombs and assassination. One need only look at Poland, the Falklands, Afghanistan, El Salvador or Nicaragua to see how fragile that experiment is and what happens when the politics of self-government fails. There is a difference between skepticism and contempt for politics. Skepticism of blandishments served up by politicians probably has kept us relatively free. Contempt is corrosive and self-defeating, eroding the one process we have for reaching widely acceptable decisions about the rules we must all live with. People are failing to vote, not because they are apathetic, but because they no longer accept the decisions of elected officials. There is a growing contempt for those who are elected and a new unwillingness to accept the laws they pass. The word "politician," once a title of respect, has become an epithet. Elected officials are dismissed as corrupt or windbags. The late Al Capp captured the image when he created Dogpatch Senator Jack S. Fogbound in the Li'l Abner comic strip. Fogbound's campaign slogan read: "There's no Jack S. like our Jack S." The intensity of this contempt has come as something of a shock to Oregon's legislators and statewide officeholders, a relatively unjaded collection brought up in the tradition of *noblesse oblige* [italics]. The negative public attitude is scaring away people who would otherwise run for office or accept appointments to boards and commissions. Add the business community's well-known distaste for public controversy, and it is not hard to understand why the quality of legislators is deteriorating and why businessmen are underrepresented in the House and the Senate. They have decided to leave the job to somebody else. There is a small but growing number of people who are no longer willing to live by the consensus fashioned by the political process. While a renewal of religious faith is probably a positive sign, there are extremists who intend to use the secular law to impose their religious doctrine on everyone else. Some of these people are actively ridiculing the constitutional barriers designed to protect us from this kind of abuse. This decline in tolerance has serious political implications. It contributes to the growing view that government no longer reflects the view of the public, that politicians are more beholden to the political action committees that finance their campaigns instead of their party or their constituents. Libertarians, the fastest-growing political party in Oregon, view government as an enemy to be contained, not as a friend whose help to seek. Libertarian anti-government bias is so strong and their views are based on such radical reinterpretations of our history it is hard to decide whether these people are extremely conservative or closet anarchists. The Libertarians and fundamentalists are among those who have less and less in common with the people of more traditional political persuasions who dominate the Legislature - people brought to politics in the tradition of the late Richard L. Neuberger, whose 1954 book "Adventures in Politics" chronicled the legislativve careers of Neuberger and his wife, Maurine, and motivated many capable people to seek public office and accept government appointments. The consensus that held government together for the last 40-odd years is crumbling, and no new consensus is emerging to take its place. No leader is emerging to fashion a new one. Potentially capable leaders are discouraged from running for office by the contempt their peers and the public hold for politics, and a growing number of people stay away from the polls because they are unwilling to be associated with the results. Whatever else that is, it is not voter apathy. *****************end of editorial. To Oregonians: vote tomorrow. Your future may depend on it. Barbara Zanzig