WHERE DID ALL THE STATESMEN GO? IT'S ALL PARTY POLITICS NOW

Did you ever wonder what became of the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Vandenberg and Cordell Hull?

Chances are, some of those names may not ring a bell, although they are enshrined in our history books if not our temples of entertainment. A few of them were even political failures, despite their service to our country, but they achieved remarkable feats in their lifetimes and those of us who follow will never be able to pay America's debt to them.

Democrats and Republicans alike, these statesmen and others who served in the interim performed their electoral or official duties not as partisans but as Americans concerned about their government's policies. As a group, the Lincolns, Wilson and Vandenbergs were quiet men, and most were often the object of scorn, from constituents, even from friends who decided to desert them when the going got tough.

We don't have many of these men left today, which helps explain why someone as open as John McCain or Bill Bradley, despite their occasional lapses, seemed so out of place in contemporary campaigns. Both men seemed, much of the time, to be above party politics, a characteristic that our supposedly dead-brained society quickly detected and embraced.

Nor is it surprising that the two men left standing after this spring's primaries gave every appearance of being the tried-and-true political hacks voters unfailingly are handed by both political parties. Like so many elections over the past few decades, voters held their noses and went to the polls, or they didn't go at all, since there seemed to be nothing to distinguish Fiddlededee from Fiddlededum. One seemed as bad as the other so we simply flipped a coin -- because we knew what we were getting and it didn't make any difference. Maybe the late George Wallace said it best when he complained there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. It may have been the only time in his life George was intellectually perceptive.

Members of Congress came home over the recent Fourth of July holiday, leaving behind some of the work members have been toiling over for weeks. Anyone who reads the list of these congressional decisions is bound either to become nauseous or revolted. For the most part, the work is riddled with politics, designed to win favor form voters back home or slanted to enhance the fortunes of favored interests. Virtually none of it met, much less addressed, some of the basic concerns that have been voiced time after time by a vast majority of Americans.

Believe me when I say those basic concerns do not require extraordinary feats of statesmanship, nor any great amount of knowledge or study. Anyone with a high school education is capable of both understanding and resolving the problems that most trouble Americans today, and believe me when I say these problems do not include who will be the last pathetic person on "Survivor" or one who is dumb enough to want to marry a multimillionaire on television.

All we ordinary folks have been asking for over the past decade or longer can be summed up in a few sentences. Permit me to list some of these long-standing goals, and if you would like to add some, please feel free to do so.

First, we would like to see less partisanship and more statesmanship in our federal government. For the most part, we get a much better grade of governance from out state capitals than we do from Washington. This is true primarily because there is little or no difference in political philosophy on how to meet the educational, health, welfare and transportation needs of citizens within a state. This doesn't mean there are variances in how the problem should be approached, but these differences are often less about partisanship than economics. Not even the most blatant partisan would suggest a Democratic governor is superior to his GOP counterpart when it comes time to enforce a state's traffic laws or meet emergency needs after a disaster or overcome educational deficiencies in our public schools and colleges.

Even the most partisan among us does not pursue a proposal or a policy simply for the sake of defeating the other party; we pursue it because we believe it offers greater opportunities for solutions. If that were the agenda in Washington, we would be much farther down the path of better government than we are today.

The unfinished federal agenda is so long, it has become, for all practical purposes, an American wish list, something we all want but no one seems willing to embrace solutions that are offered unless they bear the stamp of our particular political faith. We want an end to the gaping economic disparity between our citizens; we want to provide all citizens, and especially our children, with the best health system possible; we want our elected officials to display the kind of integrity and initiative that will make us proud of our nation, its government and its leaders.

We want an end to an electoral system that promises favors for generous contributors and absolutely nothing for those whose financial worth requires them to spend every last dollar on life's essentials. We want a government geared for the vast majority, not the special minority, whether that be the wealthy, the religious right or the labor unions.

Americans have long said, perhaps not in so many words but they have said it by their actions, that they want a government that serves the needs of one nation, not one segment of that nation. We are one people, living our lives with a dedication to one nation, and the least we deserve is one government that leaves out no one. This was the goal of the Americans mentioned at the beginning of this piece, and they served this nation better than the hundreds who followed them. We should all strive to make it America's goal once again.

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