running versus governing

I have been thinking a good bit about the difference between running a campaign for office and governing once in office. The two do not automatically mesh and each takes its own particular set of skills as far as I've been able to determine. You may be thinking I am referring to the challenges Barack Obama faces these days--but current politicians are part of a much longer troublesome dilemma for me.

For as long as I have been able to decipher politics (some time in the 70s), I've noticed how many folks run for office on one set of principles and then when office, another set of principles show up and tries to run things. It's not quite Jekyll and Hyde, but it is eerily close. What has caused me to be circumspect about politicians is that the set of values surrounding governing that seem to predominate often has the word "re-election" ranging around in the background like a demanding, moaning sylph. I'm not convinced that this state of affairs is what the founding fathers (and silent mothers) had in mind when crafting our governmental structures. They assumed, I think, several things that are lacking today: an educated and alert citizenship, valuing genuine debate over rhetoric, carefully considering options (viable or not), and a willingness to subsume personal agendas for the greater good. Yes, some of this sounds like utopian pipe dreams, but this is exactly my point. These are values that are meant to draw us out of complacency and self interest. When we fail to strive for them, we begin to sound the death knells for democracy.

Those spouting the cheery hokum that we are living in a post-racial America have gun-toting friends that think the right to bear arms means being able to intimidate a sitting president (now exactly which other president did the secret service and police allow this to happen?) and these folks are being cheer-led by fearmongerers. Meanwhile, politicians use toteboards for votes to decide pressing national issues such as health care reform, the economy, education, energy, and international relations. Ultimately, we need to look at the person in the mirror. We are the ones who elect these folks and we are the ones who must hold them accountable. We must begin to demand better from our elected officials by educating ourselves about the dynamics of the issues that are effecting us--not by relying on the talking points developed by special interest groups that conveniently reflect narrow agendas being shopped as the common good or the rely on draw polls taken that seem to talk to a rather select group of folks rather than look long and large into the general population.

Perhaps this is where our religious communities can be helpful. They can become, where they are not, the go to place to get solid information and informed debate that help us get the education we need rather than rely on bloviated rhetoric and arrogant self righteous pronouncements that are all heat but no fire. It is hard work to craft such spaces, but we must. This is one of the ways we yoke citizenship and faith to maintain and grow a robust democracy.

health care "debate"

The health care debate rages and for many of us who watched the previous one under the Clinton administration, there are eerie and deadly similarities. Once again, special interest groups who have a stake in keeping an often pathetic health care system in the United States underweight and underfed are using fear, innuendo, and outright lies to derail any reform. Frankly, I am bitterly disappointed that the Obama administration has taken the single payer option off the table in the name of political expediency. However there may be enough there remaining that if we had a responsible debate about it, we just might craft something that decreases the rolls of those who have limited or no access to quality health care and those trying to find or maintain their health on inadequate care.

The single payer system features a centralized payment for doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers and facilities. Some argue that is a way deliver near-universal or universal health care at a controllable cost. The administrator of the fund could be the government but it could also be a publicly owned agency regulated by law. The outcry against this tends to be that it is socialist (still an effective fright word) and point to the flaws in health care delivery in Britian, Canada, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and other countries who have some version of single payer plans as "proof" that the United States should never adopt a single payer system.

Last week, I watched mainstream news reports about the mobile clinic has been organized by Remote Area Medical (RMA) in Inglewood, CA. RMA provides free medical, vision, and dental care for uninsured, underinsured, unemployed, under-employed persons in remote areas around the world. Although they traditionally have focused on the rural poor, they worked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The LA clinic is running from August 11-18 as thousands are coming to receive free medical care that they would not have received otherwise. Folks had their blood pressure checked, eye tests, mammograms, immunizations for children, dental care, acupuncture, and saw kidney specialists. What more "proof" do we need that what we have now in the U.S. is highly suspect and not representative of a democracy.

Our health care system is flawed and far too many of us are among the uninsured (roughly 46 million) and the numbers have continued to rise since 2000. We must stop wasting time on townhall meetings were the talking points of those shouting the loudest against reform were issued by those who have the greatest interest in stopping reform. We can be and must be better than this as a nation and begin to embrace the notion of "we the people" once again rather than "me and mine."

a sotomayor celebration and a few riffs

In a country that prides itself on being a melting pot, the city on the hill, the land of the free and the home of the brave--a working democracy--it is both worth celebrating and a sobering moment that the Senate has confirmed our first Latinoa for the Supreme Court. On one side, the democrats focused on her biography of rising from Puerto Rican single mother parent beginnings to successful academic careers at two Ivy League institutions (yes, Yale is making a very big deal of this), her experience as a proscecutor and corporate lawyer, and 17 years as a district and appeals court judge. On the other, the major of republican senators described her as a judicial activists and criticized several speeches she made about foreign law and judicial diversity ("wise Latina judge") and her votes on cases involving Second Amendment rights, property rights, and a racial discrimination claim brought by White firefighters here in New Haven.

As I have followed this debate, it has struck me how ironic it is that liberal-leaning judges are labeled "activist" and conservative-leaning judges are labeled "fair." These are labels that are, to my mind, ridiculous. The law has always been a complex terrain for Black folk in the United States as well as other darker skinned peoples. Although a common strategy in Black political, social, and moral thought has been to appeal to the founding documents of this nation--the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Consitution--in an attempt to call this nation to live out it ideals of justice and liberty for all; far too many daily interactions with the law are problematic if not deadly and we experience a two steps forward, one step back reality when it comes to our civil rights in the legal arena.

I have found some of the rulings from all levels of the judiary that come from many "fair" conservative judges to be biased and siding with the tradition of White supremacy, heterosexism, and class elitism that is also a part of the founding history and enduring practices of this country. It would seem from this brief litmus test, that "fair" to one person or group who feels its interests and perspectives have been protected and legitimized can be deadly to those who still feel as though they are climbing the high side of misery. Those of you who are legal scholars can do a much better job than I can in describing this history as the work of critical race theory has shown.

For my part, I celebrate Judge Sotomayor's judicial record, her honesty about the ways in which all judges should be aware that their personal narratives are a part of what they must contend with and try not to let overwhelm judicial prudence, and her pride in and respect for her family (which one of us could not resonate with having your mama there with you at your confirmation hearings?). I wish her well as being "the first" is never easy although it can be exhilirating and important as we continue our shuffle toward a more perfect union and continue to cling to the hope that we can create a genuine democracy...the Lord willing and the creek don't rise.