Should The Term ‘Politics’ Be Code For All That’S Bad?

Thu., April 23, 1998

Doug Floyd Interactive Editor

Alert readers may have noticed that Tuesday’s Spokesman-Review carried two stories about people blaming politics for difficulties they were facing.

In one, Congressman Jim McDermott from Seattle said the civil lawsuit alleging he taped someone else’s cellular phone conversation and leaked the contents “is not a private dispute but a political one.”

In a national story, a lawyer blamed “politics” for the criminal charges facing the crew of a Marine jet that sliced a gondola cable in Italy in February and killed 20 people.

How many, if any, readers balked at such comfortably pejorative use of the term “politics”?

Is it any wonder that Americans have grown disengaged from from the political arena - the place where public issues can be framed and confronted - when the word itself has assumed near-vulgar connotations?

How did that happen? And how can “politics” establish a reputation worthy of the format for civic participation?

Boosterism spoken here

If you’ve lived long in Spokane, you’re accustomed to hearing your community trashed. Just try to say something boastful about the place you live and people will line up to accuse you of everything from naivete to provincialism.

Self-denigration has become a favorite local pastime.

The heck with that. Be bold. What are the things that make Spokane great? Why did you choose to live here? And what are the overlooked assets for which the cynics never give the community enough credit?

Start listing your questions

Not only have the signs of summer appeared in the past few days, so have the signs of fall.

Not yard signs - they, too, will appear in time - but the visitations and announcements by political candidates whose names will show up on county and legislative election ballots in September and November.

As the candidates announce their candidacies, they will be making simultaneous statements about the issues they plan to discuss.

Those issues aren’t always your issues, though, are they?

Here, once again, is your invitation to begin identifying the things that matter to you as citizens and voters and that, therefore, deserve responses from the political hopefuls. Let’s see how the candidates’ agendas match up with the public’s.

Local journalism is essential.

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