01:10 AM
Politico 28 years ago revisited

Barbara Jordan's Keynote Address to the 1976 Democratic Convention

This isn't so much about which party you belong to or who you're voting for - it's about the lack of a fundamental belief in doing the right thing - simply because it is the right thing.

Politicians are supposed to be public servants, that is, to serve the public. I know there's always been pols who wheeled and dealed and were there only for what they could get for themselves, for being the big honcho and doling out favors to their friends who then paid them back many times over.

But still --

We used to have politicians that would say things like this:

The citizens of America expect more. They deserve and they want more than a recital of problems.

We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community.

We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present: unemployment, inflation...but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose; to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.

Twenty-eight years ago. She said that twenty-eight years ago, long before 9/11, long before the Gulf War, long before the dot-boom and the dot-bust. What has changed? Nothing...except we're short a few Barbara Jordans and all the poorer for it.

What happened to political eloquence? I guess it's been reduced to sound bites and again, we are all the poorer for it. It's become so much about simply winning so that the politician's own agenda can be carried out. I never voted for Reagan or the first President Bush, but I do believe they believed, believed they could do something good for the country. Their idea of good for the country was different than mine, but they were honorable in their intentions. Sure, they had friends and buddies and hangers-on who benefited by their stays in office but on the whole, they were honorable men. But today...

Many fear the future, Many are distrustful of their leaders, and believe that their voices are never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private work wants. To satisfy private interests.

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

If that happens, who then will speak for America?

Who then will speak for the common good?

This is the question which must be answered in 1976.

And still must be answered in 2004. Look how we have not come far at all, still standing in the same place. As I watched Bush the second get elected in 2000, I knew we were going to Iraq, from the moment, he announced he was running, I knew. This isn't me boasting about my foresight, I'm talking about his lack of a belief in doing the right thing for the good of the country. He's had his own agenda for a very long time, long before he became Governor of Texas even.

After Bush the first lost to Clinton in 2002, I read a behind-the-scenes look at his campaign. He may have hated campaigning but he was a good man, an ethical man who did believe in being a public servant in the real meaning of the words.

But his son. Second generations in rich families often have a hard time, it's not restricted to just Bush or Republicans, the Kennedys have had their share of problems in the sons and daughters of John, Robert and Ted who were actually the second generation but their father pushed them so ambitiously, he made them work for something and so it fell to their children, the third generation, to wander about and try to find themselves and give some meaning to their life.

That has afflicted Bush the second as well, so his goal became one-upping his dad. His dad never got Saddam so Bush the second would be greater than his dad by getting Saddam. And of course, enjoying the good life, buddying up with the right people, after all that's how he got elected Governor of Texas, why stop doing something that works? And the good-ole-boy network here in Texas suited him well, pal-ing around with them, watching baseball games from a skybox, taking private jets, vacationing in friends' houses. It's just how bidness gets round here.

Doing the right thing for the good of the country doesn't fit in with any of that. And we are all the poorer for it.

...a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

Who then will speak for the common good?

I find myself more and more drawn into this election. I will vote, I always vote, but I tend not to get emotionally invested. After all, it's four years, eight at the most, a drop in the bucket of time. And what happens, happens.

But so much of the last almost three years now lays so heavily on me. We suffered a trauma on 9/11, a part of us was chopped off and destroyed when the towers fell. But it seems that much of what has been done by our government since then has only compounded the wound, not healed it. A war that has cost many lives and injured many more, physically and mentally, has dishonered us with images of smiling torturers as our President grandly pronounces that we have made the world safer since 9/11. Safe from what? Saddam's weapons of mass destruction which have now been proven to not exist? Saddam's connection with al-Qaeda which has been proven tenous at best and non-existent at worst?

Even the atrocities that Saddam did perform in his prisons has been overshadowed by what we, the great savior of the world, the great protector of millions of Iraqis yearning to breath free, have done there in Abu-Ghraib. Lyndie England says she's a scapegoat and she's right. She's a scapegoat for the mindset of an administration that fostered the idea that she and her boyfriend should do those kind of things, that it was okay to treat people like that.

And the count of dead American soldiers in Iraq continues. The administration thinks if we don't see coffins, we won't remember them, they won't even exist, it'll be some sort of bloodless war. And the detainess on Guantanamo continue to be held with little or no legal recourse, merely the visible tip of the iceberg that Bush and Ashcroft have created with their Patriot Act and internal orders that overturn years of legal precedents meant to guard our rights and protect us from people like Bush and Ashcroft.

While on the homefront, the terror warnings increase - I thought getting rid of Saddam was supposed to reduce terrorism? And Bush cuts taxes for his friends, his good-ole-buddies who helped him get elected and who are desparately trying to make sure he stays in office for another four years so they can continue to ride on the gravy train he lays out for them.

He is a man without honor. Without ethics. Without truth. Who does not seek the good of the country, but only the good of himself.

Who then will speak for the common good?

John Kerry? Do I think he's some sort of saint, a godsend who will make everything right with one mighty whack of his silver sword from atop his white horse? No. But he is a more honorable man than what we have in the White House now. He's been thru hard things in his life, he's been a public servant for almost thirty years, raised by an activist mother, he's believed in causes and been disillusioned by them too, a good leavening of reality never hurts anyone.

He won't make everything perfect, but it's a start.

A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.

A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.

We cannot stand by and let the lies continue. The lies that getting Saddam solves everything, the lies that Americans would never torture others, would never treat prisoners unfairly, the lies that we would never lie about weapons of mass destruction or ties to terrorist organizations. We must participate.

In this election year we must define the common good and begin again to shape a common good and begin again to shape a common future. Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling t participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.

We must participate.

...what are those of us who are elected public officials supposed to do? We call ourselves public servants but I'll tell you this: we as public servants must set an example for the rest of the nation. It is hypocritical for the public official to admonish and exhort the people to uphold the common good. More is required of public officials than slogans and handshakes and press releases. More is required. We must hold ourselves strictly accountable. We must provide the people with a vision of the future.

A vision of the future -- good, bad or indifferent as long as it's not lies.

It's worth repeating....

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

If that happens, who then will speak for America?

Who then will speak for the common good?

This is the question which must be answered in 2004.

---

(Thanks to Dargie for talking about smart, savvy women which got me stumbling across Barbara Jordan's speech. I'd heard excerpts in the past but never read the entire thing before. Congresswoman Jordan was a great speaker, I can hear her distinctive voice rumbling in my head.)