Tribune's Tucker asks: "Why not urge someone that you think would make a good community leader to run?"

On Sunday, the Tribune’s John Tucker resumed his periodic cage-rattling with a prime, timely essay: TUCKER: A few good candidates.

Here are two excerpts.

Very few hear the call of public office and fewer still answer. It also seems that the same people keep hearing “the call.” Many times you’ll see a councilman defend his post against a former councilman (with candidates filing last week, it looks like there will once again be plenty of “currents” running against “formers” in southern Indiana). This gives the voter the choice of “keeping the status quo” or “going back to the old way of things” — not a great choice if you want to see changes in your community …

… Winning a local political race does not necessarily take the backing of a political party. It is not for the rich or the famous. An average person, with enough campaigning can attain a city council position. There is no reason that your boss, your neighbor or yourself couldn’t win a local election — so why not urge someone that you think would make a good community leader to run? It’s simple math — the more people who run for office, the better our chances will be for quality leadership.

To subvert Elvis Costello, Tucker’s “aim” is true. Here’s the single most important sentence in a thought provoking piece:

Winning a local political race does not necessarily take the backing of a political party.

Verily, for any issues-oriented human being, the existence of two political parties acting consistently and predictably as though they’ve mistaken the word “platform” for “bubonic plague contagion” is the biggest stumbling block to the involvement referred to by Tucker. You will recall that NA Confidential spent the run-up to the November, 2006 mid-term election begging for one, the other, or both local parties to take a stand on something – in fact, to declare a platform position on anything.

The sounds of faucets dripping, pins dropping and crickets chirping were the lamentable, but entirely predictable, response to our pleas.

If one favors the notion of politics as the art of the possible, and is committed to sensible, contemporary readings of progressivism and their application to revitalization and growth, what benefit can be derived from civic participation via hidebound political party structures that have been handily manipulated time and again by less principled time-servers within them – Tucker’s “currents” and “formers” -- to actively thwart change and to promote the ongoing entrenchment of locally vested interest?

It’s maddening. Both parties count reasonable, forward-looking people among their memberships, and yet neither seem capable of expanding these positives into the meaningful articulation of concepts as larger entities.

On the Democratic side, examples of this profoundly debilitating dysfunction are legion, and include the resistance of its ward heeling bloc to ordinance enforcement, the gang’s opposition to rental property reform, their pathological aversion to economic development and cultural diversity, and an accompanying genetic propensity to tout elementary school “logic” for solving university-level problems. Imagine Jethro Bodine manning the controls of a jetliner.

Local Republicans, already burdened with a regressive and theocratic national political strategy designed to elicit panicked escape, not passionate embrace, have responded to the city’s Democratic disarray by … by … little more than a shrug of shoulders and a pining glance at the GOP’s strengthening prospects outside the city’s gates. Only scarcely have they formed a credible opposition to Democratic hegemony, as underachieving as those decades have been.

However, the unaffiliated among us shan’t escape without self-criticism, and it is such grudging recognition that I gleaned from reading John Tucker’s Sunday morning column.

It’s true that a proportion of our seeming disorganization derives from the fact that it is far more time consuming to explain what one is “for” rather than to simply chant “no” and be against it, but it remains that in all places and times, reformers must do more than offer facts and evidence, for they must also find ways to convince people why it is preferable to treat with the unknown as opposed to the known, even if all seemingly are in agreement that the known has serially failed.

Make no mistake: I’m damned proud of the archive that has been compiled at this blogspot. We – including collaborators past and present – have covered a breathtaking, and by the standards of New Albany, groundbreaking, amount of platform and policy ground in a short period of time. We genuinely feel, as Ann at Diggin’ in the Dirt put it yesterday, that we’re on the right path:

I have said it before and will say it once more: I am looking for a leader, and so far, this town does not have one. The key ingredient this city needs is leadership, and it is sorely lacking. If it were not for the fact that I epitomize New Albany too, I'd be outta here.

But I'm not going anywhere, and there are a lot more people just like me. Things are going to change in this town, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the pollution. Which do you want to be?

In fact, we all know what must be done, and furthermore, we know that we must be the ones to undertake it – regrettably, without backing from our rudderless local political parties and their patronage assistance agencies, and truthfully, even if the end results probably will be setbacks, though temporary, from whence the grassroots network that we already know exists can be bolstered and widened, and the aura of inevitability brightened.

Anyone for an independent insurgency? It’s looking increasingly attractive to me.

As an example on very short notice – and I’d appreciate someone checking these purported facts, as I have a doctor’s appointment to catch – a quick glance at last fall’s election results showed that 1,086 people in New Albany’s 3rd city council district voted in the Indiana Secretary of State race. A couple dozen valid signatures from residents (2% of the above) on a petition of nomination along with the remaining necessary paperwork filed by July 2, 2007, would be sufficient for an independent candidacy in the district.

Like I’ve said before … we need a common color – blue and red having been taken, so I’d propose green (the color of the city flag) or perhaps the more compromising purple, as well as a shared basic reform platform, a commitment to educate, and with luck, some nimble strategic instincts. Care to discuss? I’ll be back later this afternoon.