Well, despite my best intentions, life and work continue to keep me too busy to post on the blog as often as I would like. This week, however, I am finding some time to think and write while I watch the Democratic National Convention. I wonder how you all are experiencing this, and I find myself thinking about my own path to political consciousness.
I never thought much about politics until the summer of 1973. I was nine years old and President Richard Nixon was being impeached and tried in Congress for numerous crimes in the scandal known as Watergate. My father, a Barry Goldwater Republican, made me watch those hearings and we had many conversations that summer and on until the President resigned in 1974. But every since that summer I have been politically aware, and followed the political process with great interest.
I think it is interesting that so many people today really don't remember all of the illegal things Richard Nixon and the Republican Party did during his presidency. When Nixon was in the White House the IRS and tax audits were used inappropriately to harass people for political reasons, there was widespread illegal wiretapping and surveillance of innocent people, campaign fraud, general abuse and illegal slush funds laundered money that funded the political espionage and sabotage. My father was shocked, ashamed and hurt. He was hurt that his political party and his candidate had done so many things that went against everything the party supposedly stood for, and that my Dad certainly believed in.
I became a Democrat that summer, although I wouldn't be able to do anything with my political consciousness until I was 18 years old in 1982. I cast my first vote for a young former law professor from the University of Arkansas who was running for Governor. His name was Bill Clinton. During those years in Arkansas he was a good governor for the state, and Hillary Clinton was a major force for improving education in our state.
I didn't stay in Arkansas. I went to college in Texas and graduate school in North Carolina. I worked in a lot of losing political campaigns for a lot of good candidates. I voted for some people even though I knew they didn't stand a chance. Because I could never forget 1973, and everything that happened. I had become a "Yellow Dog" Democrat when I was 9, and I guess I always will be.
I have enjoyed the convention this year. Ok, I didn't appreciate much about the first night except the Ted Kennedy tribute and of course Michelle Obama's speech. But last night I did enjoy the speech by the Governor of Montana, Virginia Senate Candidate Mark Warner, and the big speech by Hillary Clinton. I have to admit that I have been upset with Hillary since Obama won the primary because I thought she could do more to unite the party than she has. But last night she did a great job and gave a great speech.
Nixon made me a Democrat. As a Democrat, nothing is more important than the concept of one person-one vote. My personal political commitment is to the idea that every vote should be courted and every vote should be counted. I also look back to the election of 2000 and I still feel personal anger for the way that election ended. I and most of the other people who voted in 2000 voted for Al Gore. How different the world could be today. How different the world should be today. Warner is right. This election is not about left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal, or red vs. blue. This is the past vs. the future. We have had too much of the politics of the past. It is time for the politics of the future.
