MISSOURI WATCH: BLAME OPERATORS, NOT MACHINERY

This year's election once again left the problems of voters' disenchantment with government unanswered and unresolved. Few seem to care, since media focus has been on the consequences for puerile politicians rather than changes that will affect how citizens are governed. Thus we find an abundance of news on how the November 3 election will affect Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and citizens in Minnesota who elected a professional wrestler as their new governor. Closer to home, election results are often accompanied by brief biographical sketches of the winners, with barely a word on how their talents will affect the governance of 4.5 million residents of our state.

Many of us worry, silently or with loud volume, about the decline of representative government, the services it is charged with delivering and the quality of representation for constituents. We worry why citizens seem increasingly jaundiced about the political process, indifferent to pleas for increased voter participation and often hostile to those who dare to espouse causes which we either oppose or refuse to consider.

While paying lip-service to the genius of our founding fathers and the system they first envisioned and later helped to launch, many of us remain skeptical of the very dogma we preach. If we have such a remarkable system to meet the public's welfare, why do we pay it such little respect when we express our distaste for those participating in the process or challenge the legitimacy of government when asked to express our views? Many citizens, perhaps even a majority, proclaim they no longer trust government, when what they are saying is that electoral majorities have mistakenly knighted wrong candidates, supported improper courses and remained remarkably ignorant of how a true democracy is supposed to operate for the benefit of the majority.

We have virtually the same form of government in 1998 as we had two centuries ago, in 1798. It's true the size has materially increased but so has the population. Taxes have increased but so have the services delivered to constituents. The complexity of governing has ballooned but so have the consequences of living, raising families and making ends meet. While many of us would be unwilling to have lived in America in the 18th century, we remain convinced, even without benefit of knowledge, that government in that era was somehow purer, more honest and more responsive to public needs.

As we search for answers to the question "What has happened?" we myopically focus on political parties and their widely publicized foibles and faults. convinced that if we once again had the qualities of leadership displayed by George Washington or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson, all would be well. Forgetting the numerous critics of our first three presidents, we easily overlook the mistakes they made, mistakes that in many cases were more egregious than the more modern judgment errors of our last three presidents.

This is not to argue the two parties claiming to serve our state and nation are without blemish, for they are not innocent of duplicity or perfidy. Neither are they the sole possessors of these crimes which exist in venues as sacred as religion and as important as commerce. If these parties do not govern us well, and without fault, is it because of a failure of the system or those who operate the machinery of government?

Or is it, dear Brutus, the fault of those who forsake the system because they are too inert to participate? In other words, is our dissatisfaction with the machinery, those who operate the machinery or ourselves? In varying degrees of culpability, it is occasionally all three.

At regular intervals in our history, we are told that the only remedy for our malaise is to reinvent government. If you have lived for half a century or more, you have heard this solution proffered at least a dozen times, the most recent being the 1992 presidential election and the 1992 gubernatorial campaign. The designers of any plan to solve our stalled democracy will give us examples of how their solutions will make each of us happier, better served and even content. Depending on the exact time this so-called solution is offered, citizens accept its codicils with an intensity determined by the times. When the economy is acceptable, we deliver a verdict of slow, incremental change; when the times are tough, we are willing to decapitate the status quo and embark on any course that promises relief and prosperity.

The problem is that when our reorganizational geniuses seek to improve the machinery, they encounter problems never anticipated, as did Franklin Roosevelt throughout much of the 1930s when he sought to rescue America from a recession that could not be cured within the limits of the then 48 states. The awful solution to the worldwide economic malaise of the 1930s was a worldwide war that harnessed natural resources with productive efficiency to meet long-denied consumer needs.

Our widespread indifference to a study of history, an understanding of how our representative governments are supposed to work and our righteous recrimination against sometimes immoral and often dishonest politicians remain at the very root of our growing disenchantment with government. The answer lies in reinventing not a form of government that has served us, often brilliantly, over two centuries but in reinventing public officials. Newcomers swept into office after election often find themselves managing multi billion dollar enterprises impacting the lives of all of us. Yet often these novices are untrained for their jobs, paralyzed in an organization unlike any they've ever run before.

The answer rests not in a remedied government, but in better preparing the government we elect at the polls. To do this requires that we, the voters, assume greater responsibility for ourselves through increased interest, understanding, maturity and intelligence.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.