Thursday, January 7, 2010

Wish list: 2010



A W
isconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
January 7, 2010

By Bill Kraus


1. A reduction in the need for money in political campaigns specifically, politics generally.

2. A reinvention, resuscitation, or something, of journalism.

3. A return of citizen politicians to the business of campaign management.

4. A decline in the influence of talk radio and other manifestations of faux journalism.

5. A revival of political ambition and a concomitant decrease in careerism by office holders.

6. A redistricting of legislative districts which is designed to have more rather than fewer congressional and state legislative districts which are competitive.

7. A reduction in the number, influence, and virulence of groups with narrow interests in politics.

8. An invention of a general interest political device into which special interests could be incorporated and citizens could find a route into political activism other than through special interest groups or entrepreneurial candidate organizations.

9. A re-creation of politics as a participatory instead of a spectator sport.

10. An end to endless (or continuous) campaigns and campaigning (see wish number 1, above).

11. A return to discourse and adversity in political discourse; sometimes referred to as civility, mutual respect or listening.

We all know that our political institutions, like all institutions, are not much interested in self-correction. The only way, then, to even make progress in any of these 11 areas is for a lot of us to realize and react to our own culpability. Someone has said what we need is for more of us to recognize that the they we criticize is us. Or, to put it more directly, as the drunken driver who turned herself in to 9-1-1 did last year, “I am them.”


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Keep posting stuff like this i really like it