Forgetting the factions

Another campaign, mercifully, is edging toward fruition only to give way to another, a process less like the changing of the seasons, which are a delight, and more like modern multimedia, which are edging toward delirium, like a maze of slot machines in some cheap Vegas casino, all flashing lights and buttons but no winners. One campaign ends and another begins, the lines fade to nonexistence, so the ends and beginnings are lost and forgotten, and power passes from one party to the next and back again, and the people who still play do so in the role of suckers, pulling levers in vain hope of hitting a jackpot on a machine rigged never to pay a dime.

This is the perpetual backdrop and a widening one to the election that takes place 17 days from today. To be sure, there are worthy candidates on the ballot, people sincerely interested in serving the public, and there are pretenders, people who cherish prestige and an aura of power if not character enough to truly possess it. This space over most of this week and some of the next will be devoted to sifting whom we perceive to be the most qualified candidates in the field from the remaining lot. We hope to be right on occasion.

For a moment, though, we’re casting a glance at the election to follow, the one in 2010 which, of course, will be the one that tells us just what America thinks of President Barack Obama. He’s not running but his pals in Congress are. Every blow-dried anchor, talk show bloviator and snippy scribe will opine on what it all means ad nauseum until the next First Tuesday in November.

What they won’t be talking about is what we suggest the people in the places that truly compose America, which is everywhere outside of the Beltway, might start contemplating now. Local elections will happen, including here in Waynesboro. Seats occupied by councilwomen Nancy Dowdy and Lorie Smith will be up; the council’s conservative bloc is locked in through 2011 with terms ending the following spring.

Whoever seeks those positions – presumably, Smith will run; word is, Dowdy will not – could turn the election into a referendum on the council’s majority faction, similar to the judgment awaiting Obama. We hope the campaign takes a different turn, one that focuses instead on ideas to regenerate the city and gird her for unfolding shifts in the town’s demographics and economy.

Real fights are there to be had over how to spend a constricting supply of tax money, and especially over how to do that in a way that expands the city’s business base rather than constricts it.

But there’s also much that can be done beyond the narrow boundaries of these arguments. Ideas, ingenuity and energy as much as money are drivers of prosperity. This city is poor, though not quite broke.

If Waynesboro is to be guided by officials rich in that which matters, the people will have to demand as much. We do so here on their behalf. We’ve had enough of factionists. Now give us leaders.