Connecticut's Best and Brightest?

The folks who would like to replace Governor Rell and Senator Dodd in order to change Hartford and Washington DC share a common problem. Each offers some version of "business as usual" to connect his or her opponent to the respective dysfunctional cultures of state and national government and then engages what any voter who can read without moving his or her lips can see as "campaigning as usual."

Each candidate selects from a common menu: quoting opponents out of context, tinting opponents' least flattering photos for an evil, unattractive image (oooh, clever!) sharing partial truths, and making it clear that the opponent engages negative campaigning and tells lies. The Foley and Fedele campaigns are so similar their respective contents could be exchanged and the ads would work—and that’s true of the Molloy and Lamont campaigns as well. Oh, and just when it seemed the McMahon campaign might be refreshingly above the fray, their one-issue postcard attack on someone who’s not officially their opponent yet arrives.

These change agents are homogenous and blind to their homogeneity. Despite superficial differences in content, we can hear the same conventional, two-party, political voice speaking through each of them. They’re doing and saying what candidates always do and say—in the name of change. They may be decent parents and potentially harmless outside of their political ambitions—and apparently good at something that makes them money as well, but if their campaigns do represent them, they are either painfully unaware of the idiocy embodied therein, or they’re aware and are unable, unwilling or unequipped to let that idiocy go. If their campaigns don’t represent them, well, I don’t even know how to finish that thought in a few words.

We’ve needed a “none of the above” selection on the ballot for decades, which allows voters to exercise what is both an obligation and a privilege, while not being reduced to voting for the least dislikeable candidate. The current batch of Connecticut candidates are poster children for that selection. To quote the former First Lady, “Just say no.”

What Do You Call It When...

. . . a government . . .

• . . . agrees to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of money it doesn't actually have, and end thousands of lives to attack a country that is thousands of miles away, after supporting the country's dictator for years . . .
• . . . then publicly changes its rationale for the attack each time a previous rationale is discredited . . .
• . . . agrees to spend hundreds of billions of dollars it doesn't actually have to bail out financial institutions that are in trouble because of their own mismanagement and greed, and automobile manufacturers whose shortsightedness and poor quality rendered them unable to compete on their own...
• . . . is dominated by two political parties, which, despite their at times very real philosophical and policy differences, behave with exactly the same level of stagnating partisanship and schoolyard-bully idiocy when they hold a majority in the legislature . . .
• . . . whose elected and appointed officials have access to what is arguably one of the best healthcare plans on the planet, are categorically unable, over almost half a century, to provide even barely adequate healthcare opportunities for tens of millions of their constituents, and explain away this historical failure by pointing their fingers at the other political party . . .

For starters, it's a shame, and it's actually very complex. Most of our government officials and the media who report on them are in so far over their heads, and know so little about their own conditioned biases, that it takes a strong desire and a lot of work just to find out and understand what is actually going on--locally, nationally and globally.

Many of these folks are well-intentioned and honest, within the limitations of what their respective amusement park admission tickets allow them to experience and talk about. But until they realize that the horses they ride just go up and down as the carousel goes round and round, they are nothing more than Thomas Merton's "anonymous authority of the collectvity" speaking through the masks of government and journalism at their respective worsts.

Of course, this is true for all of us, but the politicians, journalists and pundits speak through powerful media as voices of authority, or, at least, truthfulness, and that comes with some responsibility.

I'm waiting to hear one or more of these folks say something like, "This is amazingly complex, and right now I don't have the solution to it. And I don't know anyone who does. But trust, that finding and implementing the best solution, or even a good solution, is the driving passion that fills my waking hours and my dreams."

We need leaders who work to uncover truth, and then speak truthfully. And then act with integrity.