THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509030038
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: Cole C. Campbell, Editor
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
What is politics for?
The answer shapes the entire way we view campaigns, elections and government.
If politics is for dividing up the goods and services that government can deliver, then it is about winners and losers. Winners dole out jobs, grants, contracts, tax breaks, subsidies, programs, regulations.
Given that view, it would make sense to cast a General Assembly campaign as ``November Madness'' or ``The Road to Richmond,'' a political tournament in which the governor's resurgent Republican squad takes on the perennial champion Democrats in a battle to control the legislature.
Much political discourse - the conversation now dominated by politicians, political enthusiasts and political journalists - has been clogged with sports cliches and military metaphors. Over time, we begin to think that campaigns really are horse races and politics really is war.
If that's the case, then you as a citizen are simply a spectator or an innocent bystander - excited if you are a politics buff, bored if you're not, but altogether sidelined except for the final act of casting a ballot.
But what if politics is for sharing responsibility for the future? What if it is about searching out solutions to shared problems?
With this view, it makes sense to cast the General Assembly campaign as a continuing dialogue about who we are as Virginians and what Virginia ought to be as our common home.
This view makes you a full participant in political discussion and in testing and perhaps reshaping candidates' proposals before pulling a lever in a voting booth. This view makes politics a continuing relationship among citizens and officeholders before and after Election Day.
We want this view of politics to guide The Virginian-Pilot during this year's election season. It will be a challenge for us to shake free of old habits, old metaphors. But we're going to try.
We began in the spring and summer, talking to people like you in community conversations across the commonwealth. We conducted a random-sample poll to make sure that what we heard reflected the concerns of citizens who weren't at the table during these talks.
We have published these findings in stories labeled ``Citizens Agenda.'' We have asked you to respond by letter, fax, phone or e-mail to make sure our findings were authentic and complete. Many of you have. This fall, we will invite you to submit questions that we will put directly to the candidates in your legislative district.
From now until Nov. 7, we want to put your agenda at the forefront and see how candidates respond.
We will focus on five areas that you or people like you have identified: taxes and spending, job creation, public safety, education, and partisanship.
We also will look at why some citizens participate as voters while other citizens do not. We will help you assess how clout may be distributed in the legislature, depending on which party controls majorities in the House and Senate. We will examine the relationship between this election and Gov. George F. Allen's legislative agenda and vision of Virginia.
And we will be vigilant in tracking who contributes to campaigns, with what expectations, and in keeping campaigners' claims as close to the facts as possible.
But we want to move away from seeing politics as centered primarily on conflict, confrontation and contest.
We won't give much attention to political talk or action designed to distract you from a vibrant public discussion of the issues. We won't analyze proposals according to their electoral pull, but we will examine who would benefit and who would not. We won't get swept up by candidates who develop ``wedge'' issues that divide the electorate into pliable camps of voters but don't translate into practical solutions to real problems.
One of the most thoughtful observers of modern politics is David Mathews, secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Ford. Now president of the Kettering Foundation, he has devoted the foundation to improving public life.
In his book, ``Politics for People,'' Mathews writes, ``Politics seems to have almost become an immoral equivalent of war, not just battles, but never-ending conflicts in which relationships are always adversarial.''
Mathews sees a practical solution in what he calls citizen politics.
``Conventional politics concentrates more on getting to solutions quickly; citizen politics concentrates on carefully defining and, if need be, redefining problems before moving to solutions.
``Conventional politics stresses the need for leaders who will create `solutions.' Citizen politics stresses the importance of citizens claiming their own responsibility and becoming solutions themselves.
``. . . While conventional politics uses a language of advocacy and winning, citizen politics uses a language of practical problem-solving and relationship-building.''
In this election season, we hope to use the language of citizenship in helping you shape Virginia's future. Maybe the candidates will start talking this way, too. by CNB