All voters going to cast their ballots simply to shake things up - to bring about change for change's sake?
This year, the dirtiest word in American public life is "incumbent." There are proposals for term limits on the ballot in a number of states -- to make sure nobody stays in office for very long. And voters also seem to be set on "turning the rascals out," even when the incumbents are not rascals and the replacements don't have much to recommend them.
In races for the Senate, House and state houses across the country, veteran political figures are in trouble. In New York, Mario Cuomo; in Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy; in California, Dianne Feinstein; in Texas, Ann Richards; in New Mexico, Jeff Bingaman; in Washington state, Tom Foley. And the list could go on.
What's the story? Are voters simply tired of the same old faces? Is it a case of familiarity breeding contempt? There's some of that. There's also a general disgust with partisan politics. And despite the fact that the economy is healthy, most people do not feel better off: Their real wages have not gone up, they believe they are overtaxed and many of them are frightened by the downsizing going on in some major U.S. companies.
Not all incumbents deserve to win, of course. But before voters go to the polls and act on the knee-jerk anti- incumbency sentiment that we are seeing reflected in opinion surveys and news stories, they ought to ask themselves some questions about the people they are threatening to throw out -- and the replacements they would be voting in.
Anybody who has been in office for a while is bound to have made some decisions that you don't think much of, but what about the rest of his or her record? And what about the challenger's record -- if you look beyond the sound bites? What has he accomplished that makes you think he'll do a better job as governor or senator or representative than the incumbent? Or that he'll be more responsive to what you and other citizens want and need? It's easy to make promises, but are they ones that the challenger would be able to keep?
Challengers often like to represent themselves as outsiders and therefore as agents of change who will sweep in and set everything right. This year's crop is no exception. But the only change you can make overnight is destructive. Building something takes time. You do it by patience and persuasion and, when necessary, by fighting for it.
This process isn't as showy as the kind of quick change challengers talk about, but the end results are more worthwhile. Without it -- and the work of veteran senators like Ted Kennedy and Jeff Bingaman -- Goals 2000, the ground-breaking education reform bill we finally got this year, would not have happened. Neither would the ban on assault weapons or the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives working men and women up to
twelve weeks of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child -- that bill took seven years to pass. But if the anti-incumbency sentiment prevails, many of the legislators who led the battles that produced these pieces of legislation won't be around any longer.
In Massachusetts, some voters are saying that 32 years in the Senate is long enough for Ted Kennedy. At the same time, they have to admit that Kennedy has been tireless in getting Massachusetts voters what they want and need, and he has never stopped working for the middle class.
In the state of Washington, some people in Tom Foley's district are saying he spends too much time in the District of Columbia. Yet they are able to talk directly to the speaker of the House, who has more influence over agricultural legislation than anyone else in the House of Representatives.
In New York, Mario Cuomo is in trouble because of things mostly beyond his control, among them the Reagan-Bush recession, federal cuts in the defense industry and global downsizing by corporate giants like IBM and Eastman Kodak. Yet Cuomo governed with a steady hand during those tough years, preserving and enhancing education and health services, especially for children, while developing half a million new jobs and seeding 50,000 new businesses in New York.
Are voters in these states, and elsewhere, going to cast their ballots simply to shake things up -- to bring about change for change' s sake? Or will they look at the candidates' records and ask themselves who can lead them in the direction they want to go?
I've been president of the AFT for 20 years, longer than Mario Cuomo's tenure, shorter than Ted Kennedy's. I'm probably a better president now than I was two decades ago. If I didn't do a good job leading the organization, I'd expect AFT members to vote me out -- but not because they got tired of my face.