August 3, 2007
Thinking anew
By Bill Kraus
I have been asked to serve on a mayor’s commission whose charge is to design a campaign system for the candidates running for offices to govern the city of Madison.
Like almost everyone who pays any attention to the sad state or our democracy would, I accepted with pleasure.
Something about answered prayers has come to mind in the wake of that hasty decision.
It is easy to identify and diagnose the flaws in our election system. Prescribing a workable treatment, however, is something different.
Putting the barriers to change (from the Supreme Court down to the newly elected member of a school board or city council) aside, it quickly becomes clear that those of us (especially me) who have been around the election system block may know too much. We can see all the symptoms without getting past them to the disease itself.
I, for one, tend to find myself confusing nostalgia with reform as I sort through all the ideas that would, say, make money less important and people more so.
I also have trouble thinking outside the box that I have operated in for almost 60 years.
Worse yet I do not count myself among those who know how politics can and should be played in and with the revolutionary new phenomenon the Internet, which is a confused jumble of problems and opportunities to me.
I keep believing that we need to think anew and hope that others, less constrained by their pasts, agree and are better at this than I seem to be.
With that hopeful thought in mind, send your ideas to FightingBob.com or send them directly to me. I can be found at gobkraus@aol.com and am looking for new ideas—the more creative (radical?) the better.
RSVP
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