Civic leaders don”t always have answers
Most people collect treasured mementos during their career. I have notes given to me by kids and their parents, banners, a sweater or two, and stacks of books lying around my office. At this stage in life I’m trying to figure out what to do with all this stuff.
While rummaging through some of my memorabilia, I ran across a copy of Babcock & Babcock’s “Our Pacific Northwest: Yesterday and Today.” I enjoyed using that text as a teaching tool. It allowed me to integrate the region’s geographical realities with the lives and times of the people who inhabited these lands over the past 11,000 years. While I’m sure some of my students missed the security that the memorization of names and dates can lend to one’s life in a history class, most seemed to embrace my small departure from tradition.
My tour of Northwest history always ended with a shot of civics, i.e. government stuff. Unfortunately, I lacked the facility to ease the pain of those final days. Students simply had to figure out that all states get two senators, but that the number of representatives varies among the 50 states. Most of the figures and formulas related to the making of laws get tougher from that point on. Those last two weeks of the class were always the roughest part of the semester, but I’ve also come to realize that they were among the most important.
Some of you are coming up with a disgusted, “Yeah, right!” And honestly, I wouldn’t have been rummaging around among my old text books if the words initiative and referendum hadn’t been in the news recently. Some lawmakers have groused about the impact initiative measures have had on their ability to govern. While I can understand their frustration, I find the suggestion that we need to modify the process unnerving. You see, the rights inherent in the words “initiative,” “referendum” – and their buddy “recall” – give credence to the concept that “We the People” govern this land.
Sometimes political leaders, indeed executives in any field, have a mirror problem. Folks afflicted by this syndrome see a small crown rising above their hairlines in their reflections. They also often assume that their position, coupled with their increased access to the facts, give them a leg up over we commoners when it comes to making decisions.
A guy by the name of William U’Ren, who lived in Oregon in the early 1900s, got fed up with this syndrome. He believed that large business interests influenced his state Legislature, and the laws which were made therein, to an unacceptable degree. U’Ren and his cohorts convinced their neighbors that the people needed a way to insert their views into the political process. People living throughout the Northwest bought into his program. Citizens in Washington, Oregon and Idaho showed up at the polls in 1912 to ensure that the rights of initiative, referendum and recall would become the law of the land.
I’ve not witnessed a decline in the size of governmental institutions or in their influence on the lives of the average American during my lifetime. Consequently, I find any suggestion that we modify our access to these rights repugnant.
The WASL season is here. Many kids throughout our community are afraid they won’t do well on the test and concerned about the impact it will have on their future. I think it’s great that some of our political leaders have stepped forward to send a message of hope to those youngsters by showing them that even they don’t always come up with the right answers.