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(A rhetorical inquiry: "Is America Dying?") From most of what we read and hear and see, these are not the best of times for America. Reportedly, America is very sick, and American democracy is experiencing dangerous disarray as we enter the New Millennium. Despite obvious prosperity, tell-tale signs of democratic ill-health have been charted extensively throughout the l990s: The national environment of American democracy is in serious decline. The American people are losing their civic spirit. The political organs of American democracy are malfunctioning. American government is headed toward stroke, paralysis, or something worse. Most importantly, we seem to be tiring of our national democratic experiment. Two centuries of irresistible democratic nationalization now clash head-on with the equally powerful forces of democratic decentrifugation; and we may be witnessing the demise of an America that so proudly proclaims itself "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". How do we make sense of such democratic disarray? How do we deal with the daunting realities of a changing America? How do we keep from becoming "the Disunited States of America -- one nation -- ungovernable"? The possible demise of America is an unpleasant thought; but that is my rhetorical concern after three d ecades in public life -- as a political scientist and public official -- including most of the past decade as a member of the United States Congress. I have come to the disturbing suspicion that as we enter the twenty-first century, we are drifting perilously away from the Great Experiment of American history. American democracy no longer works the way that it is supposed to work; and our grand and glorious America seems to be disintegrating, grinding to a halt -- sometimes noisily, sometimes unconsciously, and often by popular decree! Therefore, it is worthwhile to ask some serious questions, despite the pain of their articulation, about the civic health of the American system. In these discussions, I am posing the issue as an outrageous rhetorical question -- "Is America Dying?" -- to help encourage a national dialogue about the civic health of America. Without a serious national discussion now, the dysfunctions of American democracy will only worsen; perhaps stating our condition as a terminal affliction will enhance our willingness and ability to engage in this dialogue. Americans historically have subscribed to an American dream, the notion that life will always get better -- that somewhere, over the rainbow -- tomorrow, tomorrow, just a day away -- anybody can become rich, and happy, and maybe even President of the United States. Waves of immigrants and settlers pursued their destinies here, despite hardship and possible death, with dreams of unlimited opportunity. James Truslow Adams defined America (ironically during the Great Depression) as "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement" (The Epic of America, l93l). I define America more analytically as an uncertain but inspired civic exercise -- "a national experiment in democratic ideals" -- and I hitch our national dream inextricably to the political process of American democracy. Despite its fuzzy and varying articulation, America has enjoyed unprecedented greatness by all standards; and the American dream, ably assisted by the seemingly endless capacities of American democracy, has sustained generation after generation over the years. During the past few years, however, there has been a rush of commentary about America's deteriorating civic condition at the close of the twentieth century. Academicians and journalists have been articulating bluntly what many inside politicians suspect but can not say publicly -- that America is developing a fundamental civic illness of body and spirit. Our historic national experiment in democratic ideals -- which has made America great for two centuries -- no longer works the way it used to work, procedurally or substantively; and we seem to be losing our commitment to that experiment. How can I say such things when the American economy is booming and the United States stands alone as the world's reigning super power? The answer is that America means more than economic prosperity and international power. History abounds with regimes and empires possessing material riches and military might, but America is special because here also are found ever-expanding freedom and equality. We have indeed been a wealthy and strong nation, and those qualities have facilitated the workings of our civil society, politics, and government. But the essential, definitive character of America has been its national experiment in democratic ideals -- this is a place where, first and foremost, we have enjoyed the progressive political blessings of democracy for many generations. All of us -- rich and not-so-rich -- cheer our good fortune of the l990s; however, it would be a major mistake for temporarily giddy America to postpone or cancel serious debate about basic political weaknesses in American democracy -- the cumulating impact of our deteriorated national environment, the evolving conflict between freedom and equality, and the divisive debate about values and governance. Sooner or later (and more likely sooner) in the new century, America will encounter economic downturn from the high times of the l990s; and inevitably we will find ourselves enmeshed in serious military conflict. Eventually, then, domestic and international crises will test our national character and our Great Experiment. Issues of liberty, equality, and justice will assume more than rhetorical interest; and questions of cultural values and governance may prove systemically disruptive. In other words, the door of opportunity is open, and we would do a terrible disservice to ourselves and to future generations if we were to allow our current good fortune to keep us from addressing, now, the essential challenges of contemporary American democracy. The central truth, then, is that the historic essence of America is democratic ideals -- freedom, equality, and justice -- not economic prosperity or military power. A correlative truth is that fundamental faults underlie the surface calm of our national experiment in democratic ideals; and these faults will only worsen without corrective treatment. I will let some book titles of this century's closing decade make my point about America's troubled democracy and civic debility: Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (l999); The End of Democracy II: A Crisis of Legitimacy (l999); The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why (l999); The Disuniting of America (1998); Disunited States (1997); Civil War II: The Coming Breakup of America (l997); The Decline of Representative Democracy (1997); The End of Democracy? (l997); The Age of Extremism: The Enemies of Compromise in American Politics, Culture, and Race Relations (1997); Why People Hate Government (l997); The Triumph of Meanness: America's War Against Its Better Self (1997); Poison Politics: Are Negative Campaigns Destroying Democracy? (l997); The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America (l996); The Angry American: How Voter Rage Is Changing the Nation (1996); Americans No More: The Death of Citizenship (1996); The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (1996); The Coming Race War in America: A Wakeup Call (1996); The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (1996); Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (1996); The Twilight of Democracy (1995); Democracy On Trial (1995); Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy (1995); Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (l995); Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government (1994); America: What Went Wrong? (1992); and The Democracy Trap (1991). America's newspapers and periodicals have been equally gloomy: "The Can't Do Government"; "The End of Government"; "Is Government Dead?"; "Americans Losing Trust in Each Other and Institutions"; "Is Democracy Losing its Romance?"; "Loss of Faith: As Cynicism Becomes an Industry, Distrust of Washington Grows"; "Fading American Dream Haunts WWII Generation"; "America: Who Stole the Dream?"; "Does America Have a Future?" Of course, anybody can say or write anything--and will. Political prognosticators throughout time have warned that the sky is falling. But, obviously, there is something happening here at the turn of the century that is different and troubling; and we need to pay attention. The important question is whether our current problems represent a natural process of acceptable change or a serious threat to America. Are we simply experiencing the necessary molting of democratic regeneration? Are we entering middle-aged democratic malaise? Or is America dying? Seasoned analysts Haynes Johnson and David Broder -- who have documented America's journey up-close, hands-on, and optimistically for several decades -- express our all-too-common fear about the seriousness of our civic affliction in The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (l996). After a year-long study of the Clinton Administration's healthcare debacle, they write: The failure of The System on health care reform might not loom so large if other great challenges facing the society were being met. They are not. Personal safety, economic opportunity, international peace, and health care are the four great security questions by which the American people judge the quality of their lives. On all but one of these, international peace, the last quarter of the twentieth century has witnessed the failure of The System to meet the legitimate expectations of the people it is supposed to be serving (p. 604).... Founders of The System, as we have noted several times, made it difficult for major changes to occur. But they surely did not foresee the self-destructive- ness and distrust that now hobble American government and politics (p. 638).... at no point, we believe, has the cumulative assault on the idea of responsible government been so destructive of the very faith in the democratic system as now. A thoroughly cynical society, deeply distrustful of its institutions, leaders and the reliability of information it receives, is a society in peril of breaking apart." (p. 639) University of Chicago ethics professor Jean Bethke Elshtain, in her anxious essay Democracy On Trial (l995), expresses an increasing nervousness among scholars about the ultimate outcome of our civic debilitation. Her concern is that the problem goes beyond the failure of institutional politics; and she questions whether American democracy can rise to the challenge: In America today, fearful people rush to arm themselves, believing safety to be a matter of aggressive self-help. Angry people want all the politicians to be kicked out of office, but they believe new ones will be no better. Anxious people fear that their neighbors' children may get some unfair advantage over their own. Despairing people destroy their own lives and lives of those around them. Careless people ignore their children and then blast the teachers and social workers who must tend to the mess they have made, screaming all the while that folks ought to 'mind their own business.' Many human ills cannot be cured of course. All human lives are lived on the edge of quiet desperation. We must all be rescued from time to time from fear and sorrow. But I read the palpable despair and cynicism and violence as dark signs of the times, as warnings that democracy may not be up to the task of satisfying the yearnings it unleashes for freedom and fairness and equality." (pp. 20-2l) America seems to be in serious trouble as we begin the twenty-first century! IT IS TIME FOR A TOCQUEVILLIAN CHECKUP OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. Thus it is time, as we begin the New Millennium, for a serious national dialogue about America -- and it is time for a full checkup of American democracy. We need to pay attention, not only to the dark signs of our time, but also to the nature, the essence, the cause, and the cure for our civic illness. We must engage in a broad, constructive discussion about our past, our present, and how we can restore our democratic health. In sum, we now must attempt to make sense -- normatively and comprehensively -- of our democratic disarray. Our examination of America must be guided by more than academic curiosity, by more than pride, and by more than cynicism. We would be wise to follow the lead of Alexis de Tocqueville, a young Frenchman who came to America early in our country's history in search of the future of democracy: I confess that ... I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress. AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I first envisioned this series of lectures, I pledged to myself that I would not, under any circumstances, invoke Alexis de Tocqueville and Democracy in America (1835). The plain truth is that Tocqueville and Democracy have become trite. The Frenchman's work has been quoted and cited to numbing excess, and it has come to mean anything and everything. Democracy is exhaustive, vague, and inconsistent in general (for example its discussions of equality and democracy), and wrong in some particulars (for example, its prediction of the declining future of centralized government). However, over the course of time and dealing with the travails of America, I have come to the realization that Tocqueville and Democracy are essential. The reality is that Democracy is the benchmark discussion of American democracy. Its historic timing (capturing the character of upstart America, a half-century into its development, for a waiting and watching world) and methodology (a comprehensive, empirical, and geographical tour of the young nation) established it as the basic source for all following reference and commentary. But most important is the power of Tocqueville's message. For all its weaknesses, Democracy in America is a strong and original explanation of the nature and future of America's Great Experiment. So I swallowed my "trite" objections -- and, in retrospect, I'm glad I did so. Learning what we have to fear or hope from today's America means more than simply complaining about our problems. We have had enough whining from disgruntled citizens, politicians, and the media. I am reminded of a conversation with an older gentleman a few years ago when I visited Ross Perot's national convention in Dallas. As a long-time reform analyst and politician, I wanted to find out what United We Stand stood for. "Why are you here?" I queried as many "Perotistas" as I could find at the convention center and in the hotels and streets. My favorite conventioneer laughed and said, "I'm here to participate in our great American national past-time, and it's not baseball, sex, or even politics. It's bitching!" Rather than just fussing about America, I want to help develop a coherent "big picture" of what's troubling us; and I want to frame that big picture within analysis that is theoretically and practically sound. I will try to incorporate classic interpretations of American history and my own ideas into a broad, fairly original thesis of American democracy. I will try to sort out the clatter and clutter of contemporary public discourse, to pull together the confusing deluge of research, commentary, and daily news reports about the problems of American democracy. More importantly, I want to offer some constructive projections about where we are heading and how we might restore America. My plan is ambitiously similar to Tocqueville's inquiry of almost two centuries ago -- exploring our national democratic experiment broadly and boldly with a combination of approaches and methodologies "in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress." My idea is to subject America to a Tocquevillian checkup -- a normative and empirical examination of America's civic condition during these critical, volatile, transitional times. I have not retraced Tocqueville's geographic journey, but I have lived, worked, and taught American democracy for several decades on the East Coast, West Coast, and Gulf Coast. Furthermore, for the past few years I have vigorously re-examined America abroad, in structured sessions with academicians and politicians throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. All in all, I have studied and experienced first hand -- academically, politically, and personally -- America's inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions. "The Future of American Democracy" is a brash, unsettling, but constructive examination of our historic national experiment in democratic ideals. My examination poses a provocative question to the American people as we face the New Millennium: Can our nation -- a people of growing cultural diversity, with increasingly divergent ideals, values, and principles of governance, in an environment of constricted political blessings and benefits -- continue our collective pursuit of freedom, equality, and justice within the traditional framework of limited, representative government? I will attempt to address this unpleasant question about America's future with my own theoretical, political, and personal analysis of contemporary American democracy. I do not claim the neutrality or methodology or thoroughness of scientific research; my analysis -- while based on substantial study and experience -- is more normative and provocative. My contention is that our end-of-century troubles constitute a fundamental civic illness; and my hope is that examining America rhetorically, as a dying entity, (l) will encourage more structured discussion and scholarship about America's contemporary civic condition and (2) will help us figure out how to restore the Great Experiment of American democracy in the coming century. Before beginning my examination, however, it is important to make a couple of things very clear here at the outset. Initially, I want to state that my definition of America as "a national experiment in democratic ideals" does not represent any policy agenda other than my commitment to America's historic Great Experiment as an ingenuous accommodation of democratic dream with democratic reality. Also, I want to emphasize that my "dying" terminology is not based on the soap opera drama -- presidential impeachment, partisan bickering, institutional gridlock, budgetary fights, public scandal, personal failings, morality debates, political incivility, or other such media preoccupations -- of contemporary American politics. I plan to sprinkle policy, political, and personal commentary throughout the following pages, but our national dialogue must focus primarily and fixedly on more basic, fundamental, structural developments -- unhealthy systemic changes -- in American democracy. As the sub-title of this lecture series suggests, I am treating the contemporary disarray of American democracy as a fundamental -- perhaps fatal -- civic illness. Thus, the following discussion will proceed as a physiological analysis, with systemic theory, clinical observations, alternative prognoses, and curative recommendations. The general objective of my Tocquevillian checkup is to determine the present and future health of our national experiment in democratic ideals. How healthy -- or how sick -- is America? Is American democracy working for America? Does American democracy still produce -- as it has in the past -- blessings and benefits of sufficient nature to sustain public support for our collective experiment? Can American democracy continue its historic "magical mix" indefinitely into the future? Is there anything that can be done to strengthen American democracy and America in the New Millennium? The test of this Tocquevillian checkup, of course, will be the validity of my analysis and its contribution to our national dialogue. I want to interject here a clear qualifying footnote to my blunt language about "dying" America. Speaking personally, politically, and theoretically, I do not really believe that America is going to die! Let me repeat that statement -- I do not really believe that America is going to die! My question is rhetorical. There is no serious question about the survival of America -- the real mystery is "What kind of America will survive?" My challenge is for us to think seriously and critically about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. My dying analogy in actuality is an attempt to strengthen America's Great Experiment in democratic ideals; I hope that the audience will leave this discussion with a healthier appreciation for America and American democracy. This rhetorical challenge is important and timely because the entire world is now experiencing a revolutionary movement -- the massive, irresistible force of democratization -- similar in its historic implications to the sweeping egalitarianism of Tocqueville's time. Virtually no one anticipated the changes wrought during the l990s; and it would be ridiculous to think that these transitions are over. The contemporary democracy movement is a development of indefinable and unpredictable nature that represents volatile possibilities for our American republic. There's no clearer statement of the monumental issue facing the American people -- and the central question posed by this manuscript -- than the eerily contemporaneous and final words of Democracy in America: The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness. (Volume II, p. 352) We clearly are undergoing a democratic metamorphosis that, for better or worse, is reshaping our nation and world history. It is time to address the future of America. In the following lectures, I plan to assess the civic health of America as an ailing organic system subject to diagnostic analysis and treatment. In Lecture #2, I will define America as "a national experiment in democratic ideals" and propose that we may have pushed our experiment to its limits. I will explain that American democracy -- "a magical mix of people, politics, and government that allows us to pursue democratic ideals" -- is not working the way that it is supposed to work (or the way that it has worked for the past two centuries); and, as a result, we seem to be giving up on the Great Experiment itself. Systems theory will provide the general framework for a more structured examination of declining American democracy, thereby laying a clear analytic foundation for the rest of this series. Lectures #3, 4, 5, and 6 will present several political propositions -- the possible "whys" and "hows" -- of struggling America as follow-up to the preceding systems theory. These observations -- based on my own experience and expertise and the scholarship of many others -- deal with our deteriorated national environment, our philosophical civil war, our dysfunctioning people, politics, and government, and our declining commitment to the Great Experiment. Lecture #7 will raise the question of whether America is really going to die and speculate about some of the wild things -- such as "the United State of Amerika" (the nazification of our nation), "the Union of Socialist States of America" (the triumph of left-wing sentiments), or maybe even "death" (dissolution of America) -- that might occur if we continue to push our Great Experiment beyond its limits. In Lecture #8, I will suggest how we might restore America in the New Millennium -- that is, by coming to terms with what America is (an experiment -- not perfection) and by reworking that experiment for a changing America. I conclude by discussing five necessary steps (some of which are already underway) toward "New America". The following material is assigned reading (also available at the JSU library) for enrolled students; there is no formal public lecture related to this material.) THE PASSIONATE PERSPECTIVE OF A VETERAN POLITICIAN, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, AND 'AMERICAN DREAMER'." (How dare I ask such an outrageous question about America?) THE DISCOMFORTING VENTURE OF MY RHETORICAL INQUIRY. Speculating about the "dying " of America is a personally discomforting venture. It seems almost unpatriotic to raise such a chilling idea amid the comfortable warmth of post-cold war democratic celebration (and a frenzy of stock market euphoria). My associates in the political world and academic community often react with incredulity and indignation when I first bring up my rhetorical inquiry. I can appreciate their reaction to the notion that American may be dying. Legions of loonies, morality mongers, and partisan hacks regularly predict national doom; and such off-base attacks constrain productive discussion; they keep us from making sense of things, identifying what's wrong, sorting out basic problems from what is symptomatic, trivial, or just objectionable. Thus, only after many years of experience and reflection do I offer my rhetorical inquiry for public discussion. Once I explain what I mean by the terms "America", "American democracy", and "dying" -- then my colleagues usually and eagerly enter into lengthy philosophical discussions. Many disagree strongly with my ominous, rhetorical pronouncement about America's possible demise; but many more acknowledge similar discomforts about the health of contemporary American democracy. And most acknowledge the need for a national discussion about the uncertain future of our national democratic experiment. Admittedly, there are other politicians with greater prominence who could share interesting real-world experiences; and there are other political scientists of greater academic standing who might provide theoretical analysis of the American system. However, I bring to this discussion a unique and especially pertinent combination of political, theoretical, and personal experience. I bring the passionate perspective of a veteran politician, political scientist, and "American dreamer". While my background as a U.S. Congressman and political science professor may not qualify me to dictate national policy or pontificate about the real meaning of America, it certainly has broadened my perspective, enriched my insight, and spurred my interest in offering this assessment of American democracy. But more importantly, I am living the American dream -- and I have strong emotional commitment to American democracy. This inquiry is a personal, hopeful contribution to my country. Thus, "The Future of American Democracy" is my purposefully entwined theoretical, political, and personal analysis of troubled America. Therefore, I want to introduce myself -- public official, political scientist, and "American Dreamer" -- as prelude to that analysis. First, I should clarify my current situation. I have just begun an interesting assignment as Eminent Scholar in American Democracy at Jacksonville State University (August, l999-present). This Eminent Scholar appointment is a unique opportunity to combine teaching, research, and public service in the area where I worked as a political scientist before entering congress. My specific assignment is translating my academic and political experience into public lectures and seminars about "The Future of American Democracy". For the past two years, as Distinguished Visiting Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, I taught democratic civil-military relations to young officers of all branches of the U.S. defense team and military students from foreign countries. I also had the privilege and honor of participating, through our Center for Civil-Military Relations, in the worldwide democratization movement. Tomorrow, for example, I begin a week-long seminar in democratic civil-military relations in Senegal for legislators from five West African nations. In the recent past, I traveled to Honduras, Mongolia, and Colombia to conduct similar seminars in those areas. I also have participated in such programs for parliamentarians from Russia, the new republics of the old Soviet Union, and other aspiring democracies around the globe. These appointments have given me an opportunity to review my congressional experience and pull together the notes that I've been compiling about American democracy for the past decade. I am certain, furthermore, that jogging in North Alabama's Appalachian foothills and along the beautiful Central California coast has helped clear my thinking about the outrageous notion that America may be dying. Now, back -- in reverse chronological order -- to my political, academic, and personal background. MY POLITICAL CAREER. For much of the past two decades, I have served in elective public office, most recently as a member of the United States House of Representatives. I like to think of myself as a practical, public-spirited, reform-oriented, "big-D" Democrat and "little-r" republican -- working for congressional, budgetary, and political reform in Washington (l989-96); for election reform as Alabama's Secretary of State (l987-89); and on education reform as an Alabama State Legislator (l982-86). I have struggled -- with Bill Clinton, George Bush, Newt Gingrich, Dick Gephardt, Tom Foley, Jim Wright, George Wallace, numerous other big-name and countless no-name politicians, the news media, lobbyists, everyday citizens, and my own conscience -- to make American democracy work. In retrospect, my political career gave me a full appreciation of the positives and negatives of public service, a realization of my own civic strengths and weaknesses, and a better understanding of American democracy. I entered public service originally, as did many others, with an ambitious, arrogant, burning urge to help make American democracy work better than it was working in the l970s and l980s. But my flame of ambition and arrogance -- fueled by a combination of philosophical motives, political savvy, and textbook knowledge -- probably burned stronger and hotter and more self-reflectively than most. I wanted, from the beginning, to be different from run-of-the-mill public officials. I wanted to do something special. I had no delusions about being America's "Philosopher-King" -- but I did aspire to be a "philosopher-politician", a visionary leader with the practical ability to achieve as much civic progress as is politically possible. In short, I wanted to do it right -- and to make it work! It had become obvious to me, during my political science days, that civic vision -- the inclination to think in "Big Ideas" about America and American democracy -- is a very powerful and positive force in politics. Civic vision is critically important because it endows political leadership with the personal drive, public aura, and popular support for achievements of enduring significance. So I embarked on a journey of civic vision -- from Jacksonville, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery, and then on to the United States Congress in Washington -- trying to implement the ideals of American democracy while conducting myself in such a way that the people of Alabama -- particularly young people -- might regain trust in their leaders and government. Early in that journey -- while campaigning for the state legislature -- I experienced a personal revelation about my future in politics. I realized that, with guts and luck, I just might become Alabama's "philosopher-politician" -- because nobody else wanted the job. I was struck by the lack of interest in civic issues among both aspiring candidates and established public officials; very few professional politicians seemed really interested in such things as clean elections, political ethics, and constitutional reform. I could indeed exercise leadership on important matters of public policy in Alabama and possibly beyond -- in great part because normal politicians generally do not care for the civic responsibilities and heavy lifting of American democracy. Much of the explanation is that a Peter Principle of vision applies in politics just as in other endeavors. Most politicians enter the political arena with some vision, but their capabilities and inclinations toward visionary leadership seem to stagnate as they get elected and climb the political ladder. Over time, they tend to focus their attention toward more practical concerns -- waging partisan and special interest warfare, dividing the goodies of public largess, and securing their re-election. Upon reaching their maximum level of power, many public officials tend to function with the limited perspectives and concerns of their previous political and personal lives. Too often, for example, state and federal officials still think in terms of petty politics, paving roads, and school board appointments. They sit in our chambers of power and are happy just to be there, performing functional functions, somewhat like the furniture and potted plants. They do not think about our historic experiment in democratic ideals; and they are not about to bite into anything tough, hot, or dangerous to their political health. Therein, in a collective environment of vision deficiency, lies an immediate opening and continuous opportunity for sharp, ambitious young leaders. There are many fine people and some outstanding leaders in Alabama. But history has inflicted certain complicating conditions that make our politics very different from and more difficult than that of the rest of the country. As V.O. Key noted a half century ago in Southern Politics in State and Nation (l949), the South has been slow in developing a political leadership and party system for dealing realistically with its problems; and race and poverty still constrain us much more than we like to admit. Alabama, especially, clings to a way of life characterized by such terms as "traditional values", "stubborn independence" and "conservative politics". A progressive politician who had just lost a rough election campaign in the l980s described it more bitingly as "a militantly ignorant mindset". Without question, the state continues to struggle with an intransigence of personalities, special interests, and culture that works against significant progress. But I found that boldly stepping forward with vision and a plan of action worked wonders in such an environment. I was relatively new, I was not a charismatic politician, and I had no power base; but I became a point man on education reform by aggressively pushing ahead with real ideas (which I originally communicated in a personal memo to Governor George Wallace). Governor Wallace and I formed a good relationship on this issue although I had never supported him in any of his campaigns. I think that he really wanted to "do good" in his last term, and I got his full support. He simply asked me to do what was right and directed his people to help me. Over time, it became clear to me -- a second revelation -- that, in addition to the lack of vision among run-of-the-mill politicians, there was a major "vacuum of leadership" on certain critical issues at the top of state government in Alabama. Governor Wallace's physical condition (the result of the assassination attempt a decade earlier) limited his personal direction of the education reform initiative; I also found that the Governor's directives died about as quickly as he issued them. Different aides in the Wallace administration interpreted his directions in different ways; and his team in the legislature had ideas of their own -- and education reform was not among those ideas. Furthermore, many leaders in education and the business community simply opted out. As our vision and leadership problems mounted and the politics of education reform (at least our endeavor) unraveled, I kept muttering to myself that "this is a heck of a way to run a railroad". My railroad metaphor would prove ironically and repetitively appropriate. My revelational experience continued when I got involved in efforts to change the way we conducted political campaigns in Alabama. Election reform was an idea whose time had come and gone many, many times in our state. The public and good government groups had long complained about dirty campaigns and the hazy, questionable role of money in our elections. The news media editorialized often and indignantly on the issue. Our savvy Secretary of State, Don Siegelman, constantly championed reform initiatives; and State Senator Jim Bennett and State Representative Jack Venable had promoted reform for years in the legislature. I had pushed the issue as a political scientist, party activist, and political candidate, so I joined the reform team immediately upon receiving my oath of office in l982. We introduced bill after bill and held news conference after news conference. Nobody opposed us, at least not openly. But nothing ever happened. We came close sometimes, but election reform always fell short. I realized finally the full interconnectivity of vision, leadership, and the political railroad. The fact was that, despite all our visionary hoopla, no powerful political leaders or any powerful interest groups -- within the system -- were willing to flex their muscle for our reform agenda. The absence of vision and leadership on election reform was no accident -- that's how those in control keep things from happening that they do not want to happen. That is how they run the railroad. In order to win on such a tough issue, those of us with vision had to get control of the leadership and drive that train. So I ran for Secretary of State and enlisted the assistance of virtually every newspaper in the state for my reform agenda. It was a miraculous campaign. I narrowly won the Democratic nomination and general election; and I embarked as the state's chief elections officer on a reform crusade that eventually changed campaign finance disclosure and, to an appreciable degree, politics in Alabama. But, in reality, the foundation of success had been laid back when I was making plans to run for Secretary of State. At that time I enlisted the help of a friend and fellow House Member -- Rep. Jim Campbell of Anniston -- in campaign reform. Jim Campbell was a remarkable fellow -- intelligent, honest, and bluntly straight-forward -- who aspired to be speaker pro tempore in the next session of the legislature. He and I formed a pact in l986 -- if I were elected Secretary and he were selected Pro Tem, he would see that my proposal passed the House and Senate. I will never forget his words: I'll just sit down with the rest of the leadership and anybody else that's interested and tell them that nothing is going to pass if we don't pass campaign finance reform. Talk with Browder and try to work out the best that you can live with because it is going to become law. Campbell's commitment came not as a deal for my support of his Speaker campaign; regardless of whether I were to win my long-shot bid for Secretary of State, I would not be able to work for or cast a vote for him in the state legislature. His commitment was an expression of his personal philosophy, political courage, and our friendship. In l987, I was inaugurated as Secretary of State, and Jim Campbell was selected House Speaker Pro Tem. Former Secretary of State Don Seigelman became State Attorney General (he's now our Governor), Jim Bennett was appointed Chairman of the Senate Committee on Elections (and now he's Secretary of State), and Jack Venable continued as Chairman of the House Constitution and Elections Committee (where he continues to serve his constituents very honorably) . We became the leadership on this contentious issue and we began running the railroad. The Alabama Fair Campaign Practices Act became law in l988. It did not lead to an Age of Enlightenment in our state, but it did shine the glare of public disclosure and media scrutiny on Goat Hill (as our governmental community is known). At least now we know something about "who's buying" and "who's selling" in Alabama politics. Upon arriving in Washington in l989, I saw some of the very same problems -- the "vision thing", a leadership vacuum, and an anti-reform railroad running between Congress and the White House. Important people talk often about election reform in our nation's capital -- President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich even shook hands on changing the system in front of a national television audience. But the strategy of America's national political leadership seems to be one of posing for "holy pictures" and then making sure that nothing jeopardizes the rules-of-the-game that keep them in power. Inevitably, every session of Congress opens with a small army of reform-oriented Representatives, Senators, and do-gooder groups charging off, individually and in packs, in a multiplicity of directions. They all are endowed with the experience of past campaigns, and each relies on individualistic ideas, energies, and resources. Unfortunately, the reform army soon degenerates into a stumbling, bumbling, rancorous mob. These good guys, though bursting with vision, are severely unprepared for a legislative system stacked against election reform. The anti-reform forces -- including our national political leaders and the entrenched special interest community -- deftly game the reform issue, exploit the disparate reform factions, and manipulate the legislative process to kill campaign reform with minimal accountability. The establishment's strategy ("Ten Steps to Campaign Reform Failure") is predictable and effective: Step l. Proclaim publicly that election reform is an important legislative priority this session. Step 2. Establish a variety of special task forces to work for an indefinite period of time on the reform priority. Step 3. Debate, define, and complicate the reform issue in terms of contradictory ideals. Step 4. Splinter the reformers into different cliques and proposals so that nothing achieves majority support. Step 5. Load serious reform legislation down with poison pill provisions and amendments during the committee process. Step 6. Put the reform bill on the legislative calendar in such a position that it doesn't make it to an actual or final vote. Step 7. Pass a reform bill in one house but not the other. Step 8. Pass different versions of reform in the two houses and never complete the conference process. Step 9. Pass a reform act that the President will surely veto. Step l0. Finally, once the reform bill dies, posture self-righteously against the opposition party and the special interests; and swear by everything holy that we'll implement campaign finance reform next year. It has been very frustrating watching Democrats and Republicans game campaign reform to death since I first arrived in Washington in l989. They killed it with a Democratic Congress and Bush White House for the first few years. The Democrats kicked the issue around ad nauseam when they controlled both Congress and the White House. Then it was the Congressional Republicans versus President Clinton. They'll probably jawbone the issue far into the new century. I know that my sermon blames politicians, when in fact much of the problem lies with an unreasonable outside reform community and the inherent difficulty of the reform issue itself. In fact, I am not sure that election reform -- as we have defined it thus far -- is possible. However, I've played this game with the best of the anti-reformers in Alabama and Washington; and I am convinced that our elected national leaders -- both Democrats and Republicans, both the White House and Congress -- either do not want to change or lack sufficient courage to change the campaign politics of American democracy. I also am convinced that continuous reform is an inextricable element of our Great Experiment and is vital to the future of American democracy. I'll talk further about my life in the political world in the following chapters; but for now I'll just explain how I got into (and out of) public service. I decided to enter politics, in l980, as a natural extension of my academic experience as a political science professor at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. For the previous decade I had taught the "political" stuff -- leadership, elections, political parties, public opinion -- becoming, in that process, immersed in local and state government. I had developed relationships with many public officials, and my former students were becoming a force in Alabama politics. Thus, after years of teaching American government (and helping get other people elected to public office), I determined to try "public service" myself. I was never driven by any hard political issue or partisan motive or ideological commitment -- I simply believed in American democracy and thought that I could help make it work better than it was working. So in l980 I developed a "l-2-3 gameplan" that would allow me to be a player -- a philosopher-politician -- in American democracy. My gameplan included what I thought needed to be done -- both substantively and procedurally -- and how to do it. The result was immediately positive, and the plan unfolded in phases almost as if pre-ordained, with timely steps up the political ladder from Jacksonville to Washington: First I established a political presence within the Democratic Party. I gained immediate appointment to the State Democratic Executive Committee (our local committeeman decided to step down in my favor when I told him I was interested in getting into politics). I was selected as part of the Alabama delegation to the l980 Democratic National Convention; and for the next two years I worked in the partisan vineyards of local and state politics. Next, I stepped into the electoral arena. I approached our state representative about his plans for the l982 election, and he told me that he was not running for re-election to that position. I led a five-man primary race and won the runoff for the Alabama State Legislature (l982) where I worked on, among other things, education and election reform. Toward the end of that term, our Secretary of State announced that he was running for another position; and in l986 I jumped into an uphill campaign for that open office against a seemingly unbeatable, old-time George Wallace ally (who was also Alabama's two-term state treasurer). We went to sleep on election night (Tuesday) neck-and-neck with 90 percent of the ballots counted, and the official results trickled in for days. On Friday, I took my family to the beach and read in the paper that weekend that I had been declared Secretary of State with 5l percent of the vote. As chief elections officer, I championed successful passage of the Alabama Fair Campaign Practices Act. Two years later, my very respected and long-time Congressman passed away in office, setting up a special election among thirteen hopeful replacements (nine Democrats and four Republicans). I survived three elections (primary, runoff, and general election) in three months, taking my seat in the U.S. Congress in l989. My l980 "gameplan" had become reality by l989, and for most of the past decade I have done what I got into politics for -- trying to make American democracy work better. I plunged into the Washington game -- Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic Mainstream Forum, Democratic Study Group, Democratic Campaign Reform Working Group, Democratic Budget Study Group, and eventually a rebellious but effective rump group known as the "Blue Dog Coalition". As a relatively junior legislator, I worked on, even championed -- with mixed success -- congressional, budgetary, and political reform. I am especially proud that our national budget deficit -- which I considered the greatest immediate danger to our national destiny -- was pretty much eliminated during my tenure in Congress. I won several re-election campaigns fairly easily with minimum expenditure, a fact I like to think was due to the quality of my leadership, service, and political skills. The above chronology explains how I got into politics. Now, why did I get out of public service? Since ex-politicians can always use a handy litany of acceptable reasons why they are ex-politicians -- here's my "Top l0 Excuses For Getting Out Of Politics": Excuse No. l. "Because I got sick of politics -- period!" Excuse No. 2. "Because of the nastiness and lies!" Excuse No. 3. "Because of the constant campaigning!" Excuse No. 4. "Because of having to raise so much money!" Excuse No. 5. "Because of unreasonable constituents!" Excuse No. 6. "Because of the special interests!" Excuse No. 7. "Because of negative attacks!" Excuse No. 8. "Because of the news media!" Excuse No. 9. "Because of the hectic schedule and travel!" Excuse No. l0. "Because of the demands on my private life and family!" But the simple fact is that I got out of politics because I lost an election! I would love to be a U.S. Senator; but, unfortunately for me, Alabama's Democratic primary voters decided that they preferred somebody else as their Senator (eventually, the Democratic nominee lost to the Republicans in the general election). I enjoyed being a Member of Congress for eight years, Alabama Secretary of State for three years, and Alabama State Representative for four years; and I would still be in public office if I had won that election in l996. But I lost, and that's why I got out of politics. Actually, when Senator Howell Heflin announced that he would not seek re-election in l996, I debated back and forth for months whether to run for that open seat. I wanted a productive life after Congress, and I thought that about ten years in the House of Representatives would be enough for me. I also knew that I faced an uphill fight (although the polls looked good and I would end up with primary endorsements from all sixteen daily newspapers). I prided myself, to a fault, on being an independent and unconventional leader, challenging the special interests of both the left and right. I also despised fundraising and avoided asking or taking money from numerous deep-pocketed interests. I can tell you from experience that this is not the ideal plan for trying to move from the House to the Senate. As a general rule, core constituencies of the left and right don't respond very positively to being challenged; and the Alabama Democratic Party doesn't build many monuments to bipartisan budget balancers. I correctly figured I would have just as tough a time winning my own party primary in the summer as beating the surging Republicans in November's general election. But everything had worked marvelously for me thus far, and I entered that Senate race with an attitude of "I'll try it my way -- if it works, OK, if it doesn't work, OK!" As the record shows, it did not work. In retrospect, what can I say about the overall experience? What happens between getting in and getting out? What occurs over time as a politician runs the course from rookie to veteran to ex? Is there any difference, attitudinally or behaviorally, upon exiting the political arena? I said earlier that I got into politics with ambitions toward being a philosopher-politician, that I wanted to do it right. My "do it right" statement may strike some as overly self-indulgent rationalization; but my sense of responsibility was genuine -- I sincerely wanted to do everything within my power to strengthen our national experiment in democratic ideals within its historic framework of limited, representative government. From the beginning, I took my job in public service seriously. I enjoyed doing it. Every day in Montgomery and Washington was a seminar in American democracy, and I would have paid for those privileges and experiences. I was good at it because I took on the burdens of public office conscientiously -- maybe too conscientiously. I engaged virtually every aspect of public service as a personal civic responsibility. I agonized over most issues and even constituent cases. I felt that I should reach the "right" decision among public policy options where there were no clearly right or easy options. For example, I truly believed that restoring control of our fiscal destiny (meaning balancing the budget) was a critical national objective for our children and posterity. But I also pushed for economic help for our local business community, medical treatment for our sick veterans, and social security benefits for our elderly citizens. I considered it my obligation to show up for work wherever, whenever, and however my constituents asked. Weekends, nights, holidays, even special personal and family occasions. I found it impossible to say "no" if anybody or anything in my district wanted or needed me there. "Doing it right" proved to be an addictive, frenetic, consuming euphoria. I led three lives -- public official, political scientist, and concerned citizen -- and I constantly juggled and balanced the demands of those three lives. First, as a public official, I struggled to merge my civic vision with the unpleasant but practical demands of political survival. It is no easy task accommodating the broad, general interests of America with the countless particularistic and parochial interests of your constituents (especially those of the Third Congressional District of Alabama) and the demanding, demeaning requirements of today's electoral politics. To be more specific, for example, I can say without question that the toughest part of public service is money -- begging people with special interests for campaign contributions today knowing that tomorrow you are going to have to make critical decisions and votes weighing their interests against those of other special interests (or the general interest). I found it very distasteful asking people for money when I probably was going to vote in their favor; I found it equally impossible to ask someone for money when I disagreed with them and most likely was going to vote against their position. Not only was campaign fundraising personally demeaning, it also conveyed impropriety to the public. One of my close political friends once said he had no problem with this endeavor -- "I simply take money from everybody so nobody can claim that I'm bought by one side or the other." Second, I complicated my mission by incorporating a serious theoretical and analytical component to my idea of public service. In keeping with my ideas about being a philosopher-politician, political science -- my pre-electoral profession -- thoroughly impacted my performance as a public official. I developed, in advance of and in concert with political events and issues, theoretical frameworks -- covering all sides of every question and issue -- to guide my political behavior. As the reader may have already discerned, I enjoyed constructing conceptual models, schematic diagrams, and just plain lists. I really worked hard to develop rational explanations for practical politics, anything that might help organize and elucidate the political world -- or at least the political world as viewed from my perspective. Overall, my political science background proved very pertinent and helpful to my political career. Unfortunately, this systematic approach consumed valuable time and attention; it also presented nagging dilemmas that could never be resolved expeditiously or philosophically. My political career probably would have been more enjoyable if I had junked some of my academic inclinations and followed the wisdom of the sports commercial -- "just do it". Finally, I had to deal with my own personally conflicted feelings, as a citizen, about America and the American dream. I now enjoy the material benefits of American democracy; and as a public official I appreciate the macro-economic system that has served us well nationally and internationally. But, as the upcoming section of my personal story will show, I grew up poor, outside the charmed circles of American society. Images of poverty and questions of opportunity and fairness figured prominently into the endless choices of public service. How best could I weigh the interests of a free market economy and mainstream society (to which I now belong) while doing right by the "little people" -- especially the poor, the powerless, and the disadvantaged -- back home? The answers never came fully or easily. I sometimes envied those elected officials who went to Montgomery and Washington on moral or ideological or partisan or special interest crusades, to save the world "for" or "from" such things as abortion, homosexuality, gun control, education, agriculture, business, labor, national defense, liberalism, and conservatism. I often resented my colleagues who represented "pure" Democratic or "pure" Republican districts, totally white or totally minority constituencies, "safe" areas in terms of people, interests, and issues. I would have liked, furthermore, to be like some of my fellow politicians whose personal lives mirrored their communities. My idea of political heaven was to be absolutely committed to an ideological philosophy, to be completely free from partisan electoral competition, and to be well grounded socio-economically with your constituency. But I never had those luxuries. Of course, conflicted assignment is nothing new in politics or life in general; but being a white Democrat in a changing South thoroughly complicated my work as a philosopher-politician. In state politics, I pushed change, reform, and progress, while carefully attending the sensitivities and forces of tradition. As a U.S. Congressman, I had to stand my ground in Alabama (where Lee Atwater had attacked me as "the most liberal politician in the state") and Washington (where I often angered my party by siding with the Republicans) -- all the while struggling with my own very strong ideas about America and American democracy. All in all, I had an idea from the beginning that I couldn't last forever in politics because my political life was built primarily on my civics commitment rather than real political terra firma. The viability of that career depended, to a great extent, on my own personal civic drive; and it couldn't last forever. My years in electoral office were intensely exhilarating. But over the course of my electoral career I simply enjoyed about as much of politics as I could stand. It was not a case of political idealism-turned-into-cynicism (my background had prepared me well for the realities of a public career). I was not physically fatigued (although it was a grinding schedule, especially during the l994 Republican "Contract with America" session). I wasn't moved by personal economics (money has never been that important to me). By all accounts, I could have held my seat indefinitely. I think that I just experienced too much of a good thing -- and I burned out! The best way to describe my "change of life" experience is to say that, over time, I became less willing to do things that did not fit my notion of public service. I had always understood that policy and politics inevitably go hand in hand; and I was pretty successful at both, pursuing as much "good" policy as was politically possible. In the beginning, I actually enjoyed the game of politics as much or more than governing. But I probably reached the point where I tried to separate policy -- to an unrealistic and unreasonable extent -- from politics. The most important change was my idea of representation. I moved away from defining my representational responsibility as a "delegate" (doing what the constituents direct you to do) toward being a "trustee" (relying upon your judgement about what should be done). I still emphasized hard work, constituency service, and trying to do what the 600,000 citizens in east Alabama elected me to do. But increasingly I found myself thinking and acting more independently, becoming more concerned with what I thought was right for America and less attentive to immediate electoral and special interest demands. I have to admit that those years in politics affected my political patience. One of the guiding principles of my leadership style was a conscious attempt to apply my professional background as an educator to my work as a politician. As much as possible, I tried to engage my constituents in "seminars" about local and national issues. I announced to town meetings that I could not solve their problems for them but that I would work with them to address our national interests. I conducted programs ("Citizen Congress") whereby groups of Alabamians would deliberate the national situation and attempt to pass their own budget. I visited civic groups, classrooms, and editorial boards to talk in deliberative manner about the future of our country. Of course, the key to success as a political educator is how to keep these "seminars" from turning into "lectures". Throughout my career, I have challenged constituents to accept collective responsibility for America. As a neophyte politico eager to make the democratic system work, I would listen deferentially to constituents -- even when I thought they were being irresponsible. I would explain to them the other side of the issue and to try to work them through their own needs and interests to an appreciation for the common good. Over the years, I got to the point where, if someone were persistently unreasonable or confrontational, I might politely tell that person that we were not going to agree and that we would just have to let the voters of Alabama decide whose vision of leadership they preferred. Obviously, not everybody shared my political style or vision of America; and these interactions sometimes became less than educational. I also became pickier about what I was willing to do for my political career. When you're young and burning with political ambition, you are more likely to do certain things -- such as couching your thoughts in acceptable terminology, courting special interest groups for their endorsement, taking campaign contributions from anybody, putting political activities ahead of family time. These actions do not necessarily mean compromising or corrupting your integrity; but they do require you to be very personally solicitous. Toward the end of my years in Congress, I became less inclined to be so solicitous. I then became increasingly turned off by constant partisan politics. Being a member of Congress (or virtually any high public office) puts you in a war zone, forcing you to engage in never-ending combat if you want to maintain your voice and influence in serious discussion. The Washington environment (driven in great part by the parties, media, and money) encourages you to attack or defend an entire partisan agenda of issues, institutions, and people far beyond the substantive reality and reasonableness of the situation. It doesn't take long for new public officials to learn that they -- just as athletes and other celebrities -- enhance their stature and power most effectively and efficiently through emotional posturing, outrageous antics, and shameless personalization; and the most ready, common, and rewarding forum for this enhancement is partisan politics. The recent House Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the possible impeachment of President Clinton illustrates my point. This committee generally attracts loyal Democratic and Republican Members of Congress; but what has happened with this impeachment business is a bipartisan disgrace. Cox Newspapers columnist Tom Teepen's analysis ("Cultural Battle Rages in House over Clinton and United States") is on target: Both groups misrepresent the nation. You'd be hard pressed to find an outfit as monolithic as the GOP's even in a Moose hall these days. The Democrats look like a parody of diversity.... these two Americas sit in judgement of an errant president and of one another.... Power will end this business, of course. Will it be power giddy with opportunity and driven by its own indignation: or power, informed by wisdom instead, that seeks a resolution in political compromise that can be, as well, socially reconciling? As we all have seen, the partisan struggle has not been socially reconciling. I guess there's an argument for such partisanship. But I never had a partisan mentality, and I got my fill of partisan warfare. Ultimately, I had too much pride in myself -- and too much respect for American democracy -- to hang around too long. I had seen too many friends go out politically frustrated and personally bitter. I saw life-long public servants consumed by politics and power and perks. Some even went to jail. Others had to be carried out feet first. I also recall the personally pivotal comment of a relatively young, successful, untainted Congressman during the intense national ugliness of the early l990s. He had decided not to run for re-election, and in a private moment he explained that "I woke up one day and realized that I no longer liked the people I worked for". In all honesty, I too realized that, after a total of fourteen years in politics, it was time for me to consider something different -- either move to the Senate (where service as a "trustee" is more appropriate) or get out of politics. So I ran for the Senate and I lost and I'm out of politics. And several years later I can attest that all of my "Top l0 Excuses For Getting Out Of Politics" have some degree of truth to them -- or, to put it another way, there are many things that I do not miss about politics. I am happy to be a former Congressman -- with a life of my own. Now I can call my wife at 4 p.m. and ask, "Becky, what would you like to do tonight?" Or I can spend family occasions and national holidays -- such as birthdays and the Fourth of July -- wherever and however I want, with my wife and daughter, rather than going to "must attend" political events with large crowds, influential power-brokers, financial contributors, and total strangers who for some reason want to spend their time with a politician. I can visit my former colleagues in Washington and my friends and neighbors in Alabama without having to bear all the awesome (as well as trivial) burdens and trappings of public service. It is not easy acknowledging these things about myself and my political career; and in no way should my remarks be taken as a negative judgement of politics (or as a cynical basis for my rhetorical speculation about dying America). As I have already acknowledged, I would still be in politics, happily serving in the United States Senate, if I had won my last election. I make these candid and personalized observations simply to introduce myself and to convey something of the dynamics of American democracy. MY ACADEMIC BACKGROUND. Other than politics, I have lived, studied, and taught in the world of academe for most of my life. Since earning my B.A. degree in History from Presbyterian College in South Carolina (l965) and Ph.D. in Political Science from Emory University in Atlanta (l97l), I have taught as Professor of Political Science at Jacksonville State University in Alabama (l97l-86), as Distinguished Visiting Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in California (l997-l999), and now as Eminent Scholar of American Democracy at JSU (l999-present). Over the years I have benefited not only from my own research and analysis but also from the keen minds and critical observations of my colleagues and predecessors in political science, history and other scholarly disciplines. I have also benefited enormously from my relationship with young Americans -- teaching first generation college students in Alabama, interacting with our emerging defense leadership in California, and engaging numerous other academic audiences in guest lectures throughout the country. I have found, from the beginning of my academic career, that certain themes and ideas recurringly shaped my developing analysis of American democracy: Alexis de Tocqueville and his fascination with "equality", Frederick J. Turner and his "frontier thesis"; and of course I've been influenced greatly by twentieth century writers such as David Easton ("systems theory"), Robert Dahl ("democratic pluralism"), and Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba ("civic culture"). Two thinkers in particular -- Thomas Jefferson and V.O. Key, Jr., have shaped both my academic and political careers. Jefferson convinced me that real leadership quite often consists of educating the people so that they can make good decisions democratically; and V. O. Key, Jr., helped me comprehend the twin problems (race and poverty) and the critical, insufficient ingredient (leadership) of southern politics. The insights gained from my academic experience have been invaluable in my understanding of the noble possibilities of American democracy; and the "lessons learned" as a professional consultant have made me aware of the realities -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- of the world of politics. Being from South Carolina, I didn't know much about Alabama when I took a job there right out of graduate school in l97l; and I did not plan to stick around permanently. I was very well aware that Alabama's history had been a fascinating, contentious, maddening political drama with dominant, troubling themes of race and poverty; and as an ex-sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal, I recognized Alabama football as an historic phenomenon of mythical proportions. I guess everybody in America back then had heard of George Wallace and Paul "Bear" Bryant. Politically, this Heart of Dixie theater had seen a string of histrionic performances, including the birth of the Confederacy, the Scottsboro trials, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Selma to Montgomery march, "Bloody Sunday", the stand in the schoolhouse door, and the inaugural manifesto of "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". In the decade prior to my arrival, George Wallace had shared the white-hot spotlight and dark shadows of Alabama's historic stage with Big Jim Folsom, Martin Luther King, Bull Conner, Rosa Parks, Frank Johnson, and casts of thousands amid universal media attention. But politics was not the only "big show" in the Heart of Dixie. The other drama of Alabama life was football. "ROOOOOLLL TIDE!" and "WAAAAARRR EAGLE!" had long been semi-religious chants of fall weekends; and living legends stalked the fields and memories and souls of this section of the country--names like "Bear" Bryant, "Shug" Jordan, Don Hutson, Harlon Hill, Bart Starr, Joe Namath, and Kenny Stabler (and I soon would get to see Heisman Trophy winners Pat Sullivan and Bo Jackson in action). I quickly began to appreciate that Alabama was much, much more than raucous racial drama and football fanaticism. Many distinguished and creative Alabamians had graced the stage of American history and enriched our nation with their lives and achievements. Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Helen Keller, Hugo Black, Lister Hill, John Sparkman, John Bankhead (and his daughter Tallulah), Harper Lee (and her visiting cousin Truman Capote), Zelda (and her husband F. Scott) Fitzgerald, William Bradford Huie, Johnny Mack Brown (the movie cowboy), W.C. Handy, Jimmie Rodgers, Nat (the King) Cole, Hank Williams, and Werner Von Braun (direct from Germany to head up America's space program in North Alabama). Furthermore, in the sports arena, Alabama had been more than football -- Jesse Owens (of Olympic track stardom in Hitler's backyard), Joe Louis (the great heavyweight boxing champ), Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Satchel Paige (three of the greatest baseball players ever), and the Allison family of stockcar racing fame -- to name just a few. I also saw that, slowly and haltingly, the state was attempting to deal with its troubling historic problems. The more progressive elements were preaching "new south" ideas like racial accommodation, educational progress, and economic development. They touted the state's rich cultural history, geographic diversity, and recreational opportunities--with frequent references to the international space program (in Huntsville), the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (in Montgomery), and the National Junior Miss Pageant (in Mobile)--as the real face of Alabama. Incidentally, I would learn, in time and through my dealings with him, that George Wallace was more than a classic stereotype of demagoguery, political opportunism, and social sins. He was, in many ways, a breakthrough populist in a state long run by the "Big Mules" and Black Belt bosses; and he and his wife Lurleen did much for the poor, the uneducated, and the disadvantaged. Toward the end, he lived through his own mortal Hell of self-realization about his role in state, national, and world history; and he successfully sought forgiveness from black Alabamians for his segregationist past. After extreme physical and emotional suffering, he realized at least partially the grace and power of redemption before his death. I observed during those years, both personally and through my own systematic research, that Alabama is an interesting society of endearing ways and enduring problems. Like most places on earth, it is inhabited by people of all shapes, sizes, and colors--some good, some bad--and like Americans everywhere, their cultural character reflects their heritage. But Alabamians -- both white and black -- also are born with something extra, a compulsive sense of place and history that exaggerates cultural affinities with nagging legacies of wounded pride, social deprivation, and racial prejudice. Perhaps this regional sensitivity explains why, no matter where we go and what we do, Alabamians (and most southerners) invariably interject into chance encounters and casual conversations some probing version of "Where y'all from?" These compulsions also may explain why we have always maintained and projected a stark, distinct, "deep south" mentality, a difficult, painful balancing of white and black, independence and community, pride and arrogance, civility and violence, grandeur and tragedy. After several years of hectic Atlanta, my wife Becky and I eagerly drove the winding two hours through Waco, Villa Rica, Carrolton, and Bremen into rural North Alabama on that muggy August day in l97l. I had a fresh Ph.D. in hand and my first academic appointment (as Associate Professor of Political Science) awaiting me in Jacksonville. Upon arriving in town, I rolled down the window of our car to ask directions from a pleasant young student-type walking along the city's main street. "How do we get to Jacksonville State University?" I asked. He smiled broadly, pointed straight ahead, and chirped "Just follow your nose!" We knew that we were going to like this place. Alabama became our home. Several things struck me right away about Jacksonville State University. First, it was a pleasant little college in a pleasant little college town. They advertised themselves as "the friendliest campus in the south", and it was. Our initial encounter with the happy chirper was typical of the community ambience then and now. Second, they paid me well (probably as much or more than some of my Emory professors made). Third, they had an outstanding football team (the "Gamecocks" were one of the top-ranked small college programs in the country), a great band ("the Marching Southerners"), accompanied by a dazzling team of beautiful precision female performers ("the Marching Ballerinas"); I always have liked such traditional fixtures and activities of small college life. Fourth, I saw something there that I had never seen before -- "redneck hippies" (long-haired bubbas who were "cool"). Finally, something happened in this small Alabama school that amazed me even more -- JSU's overwhelmingly white student body (demographically reflective of the Northeast Alabama population) elected a black SGA president while Governor Wallace was running for President. Jacksonville State University is no Ivy League school. Nor is it an Auburn or Alabama. JSU is, today as back then, a strong, regional, state university with a quality faculty and about eight thousand mostly white, first generation college kids who for some reason or the other (probably local attachments, family economics, or grades) do not go to one of the major state universities. The institution boasts no pretensions of academic exclusivity; but it consistently ranks as one of the "best buys" of American education, taking young people "where they are" and helping prepare them for productive and successful lives. Its students come from big cities like Birmingham and Atlanta and Chattanooga, from small towns with strange Indian names like Sylacauga, Wedowee, and Wetumpka, and from interesting subcultures like Sand Mountain, the Tennessee Valley, the Wiregrass, and the Black Belt. Most often, they tend to go back to those areas after graduating from college. My students at Jacksonville have always reminded me in many ways of myself -- working class kids who don't have any idea what they are going to do in life but know that they don't want to relive their parents' lives in the mills and fields and coal mines. Many of our students struggle academically; and many of them have to work their way through school. About a fifth of them are black -- adding another obstacle to their struggle. Too often they have to drop out after an unsuccessful semester or two. But many of them also have dreams and grit -- something that can't be taught anywhere, not even at our most prestigious universities. I remember the part-time undertaker who overcame a terrible upbringing in Alabama-Georgia moonshine country and today is one of the most successful businessmen (a mortician) in the area. I remember the young deaf lady from Dothan who danced her way to "Miss America" stardom. I remember the struggling boy from Fort Payne who organized and became lead singer of the super-successful band "Alabama". I remember the rough-edged kid from nearby Possum Trot Road who dropped out after a few classes to chase his writing dreams and who, within the past three or four years, has won a reporting Pulitzer with the New York Times and written a No.l national best-selling account of his Alabama upbringing. On the other hand, I also remember the young man from Atlanta, who once told me he aspired to become, one day, Georgia's U.S. Senator -- but instead he was gunned down and died outside a local gas station as the terminal conclusion of his series of armed robberies. I enjoyed teaching at Jacksonville State University during the l970s and l980s; and I can pick up the phone and call countless of my former students who went on to state and national prominence. I've run into them in the Governor's office, the Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, among corporate, medical, academic, and creative elites; I also see them on the playing fields of major league sports. But I'm just as proud of those everyday people who walk up and re-introduce themselves to me in Alabama and elsewhere -- business people, teachers, law enforcement personnel, housewives -- whose lives are better due to their schooling at this relatively uncelebrated but special institution. My substantive teaching interests throughout my political science career have focused on American government and politics; and I have been allowed to structure undergraduate and graduate courses designed to explore the nature of American democracy -- United States Government, State and Local Government, Political Parties, Public Opinion, Elections, and Leadership (in addition to the vitally useful Scope and Methods of Political Science). One of my most memorable (and favorite) experiences was the course in "Southern Politics" at Jacksonville State University. This regularly scheduled course attracted overflow enrollments -- undergraduates, graduates, good students, less-than-good students, aspiring politicos, varsity athletes, black, white, male, female, and of course my personal following -- all of whom understood that most of us would get to know Alabama politics and each other personally and that it was a fairly interesting and loose class. If memory serves me, that course produced a State Public Service Commissioner/Lt. Governor/Governor, an Alabama Ethics Commission Chairman/U.S. judge, several State Senators and Representatives, a handful of U.S. Senate and House staffers, numerous local public officials and civic leaders, and Lord knows what else. I hope that they learned as much from me as I learned -- about Southern politics, American democracy, and people -- from them. Fortunately, I also was able to conduct extensive research that was relatively unsophisticated but empirically instructive about the workings of the American political system. For example, one of my best learning experiences was a small survey research project and case study of the public, influential leaders, and city council members in Anniston, Alabama; I discovered that political policy linkage between the people and their representatives is just as likely to occur through shared community culture -- thus almost by accident -- as by the purposeful design of the players in the local political system. My research also has convinced me that race is still the strongest dynamic in Alabama politics, and such is probably the case in the rest of the south and perhaps throughout the nation. I have concluded, furthermore, that American public officials have much more discretion and opportunity for bold, positive leadership than they think they have or are willing to exercise. The diversity of my academic endeavors (and a tipoff to my future political interests) is reflected in a chronological sampling of my professional participation in a variety of forums during those years in Alabama: Author, "Southern Party Workers and the Development of Two-Party Politics" (South Carolina Journal of Political Science; l972). Presenter, "Public Opinion and Grassroots Politics" (Southern Political Science Association; Atlanta, GA, l972). Author, "The Suburban Party Activist" (Social Science Quarterly; l972). Author, "Motives and Grassroots Party Activism" (International Review of History and Political Science; l972). Presenter, "Citizen Impact on City Policy" (Southwestern Social Science Association; Dallas, TX, l973). Presenter, "The Reform Experience" (Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, GA; l973). Presenter, "Representation at the Community Level"(Alabama Academy of Science; Huntsville, AL, l973). Presenter, "Use of the Newsmedia for Political Communication" (Southern Regional Popular Culture Association; Atlanta, GA, l973). Presenter, "Teaching Democracy in the College Classroom" (Alabama Academy of Science; Birmingham, AL, l974). Author, "Race and Representation in a Southern Community" (Trends in Southern Politics; l974). Presenter, "Voting Behavior in the United States" (Taft Institute of Government Program; Birmingham, Al, l976). Director, "Quality of Life in Alabama -- Are We Really That Bad and Where Do We Go From Here?" (National Endowment for the Humanities Conference; Jacksonville, AL, l977). Chairman, "Politics of the Contemporary South" (Alabama Political Science Association; Montgomery, AL, l979). Presenter, "The Political Scientist as Professional Consultant" (Southern Political Science Association; Gatlinburg, TN, l979). Presenter, "Surveying as a Political Instrument" (Alabama Chapter of the American Planning Association; Point Aquarius, AL, l980). Discussant, "The Voting Rights Act of l965" (The Citadel Symposium on Southern Politics; Charleston, SC, l980). Author, "Political Scientists as Delegates and Alternates" (PS; l98l). Discussant, "Dynamics of Political Participation" (Southern Political Science Association; Memphis, TN, l98l). Discussant, "Decision Makers and Decision-Making in the South" (Southern Political Science Association; Birmingham, AL, l983). Panelist, "Mass Media in Public Affairs" (Public Affairs for Future Leaders Conference; Huntsville, AL, l984). I also began applying my academic theory and methodological training (particularly survey research) to real-world problems during those years at Jacksonville State University. I worked as a professional consultant with countless candidates, officials, and agencies at the local, state, and federal levels; and I am indebted to many brave souls for giving me an opportunity to apply my ideas about polling, media, and strategy development on their behalf. I'm biased, of course, but I always felt that my advice was pretty close to reality; as a matter of fact, my success as a consultant over several years helped convince me eventually to put my own name on the ballot. My consulting experience was both intellectually and politically rewarding. It also was fun -- especially the political campaigns. Very few things in academia and life are as challenging as electoral politics; and there's always a clear, timely, and consequential outcome. Just as in sports, when the time-clock runs out, you look at the scoreboard -- and you win or lose. I worked for some very good candidates and people (and some of the other kind too); and my best consulting work was sometimes in losing campaigns. Among the most memorable experiences (other than my own electoral wins) was the first campaign I worked on; my polling hit the bulls-eye and helped a good man enter the state senate. Another was an unprecedented write-in campaign that got a friend back into the state senate after he had been dumped by his party and wasn't even on the ballot (we really didn't know what we were doing but it worked). Another interesting challenge was helping a mayor win re-election in a runoff after he had been pronounced politically dead because of his poor performance in the first election; I didn't even know him -- but he came calling with some friends of mine and it looked like an interesting experiment. The worst experiences (besides losing) were having to choose between friends running against each other and having to tell certain candidates some pretty candid and rough things about their personal reputations and political standing (based on my polling). Commandment No. l. "Campaigning is both a science and an art -- and it helps if you are smart, work hard, and get lucky." Commandment No. 2. "Money is what separates 'doers' from 'dreamers' -- and winners from losers." Commandment No. 3. "Name recognition wins most elections -- thus gimmicks are effective when the voter doesn't have anything better to go on." Commandment No. 4. "It's easier to get people to vote 'against' than 'for' -- that's why negative campaigning works." Commandment No. 5. "Don't accept what the candidate tells you -- check it out yourself." Commandment No. 6. "Don't fight with the press -- except when you have to." Commandment No. 7. "Don't believe everything the public tells you in public opinion polls -- sometimes people fudge, sometimes they don't know what they're talking about, and sometimes they just change their minds." Commandment No. 8. "Don't ever lie to the candidate or the press or the public -- you've got to live with them and yourself after this election." Commandment No. 9. "Don't allow yourself to become an issue in the campaign -- you may like your name in print but eventually it will hurt your candidate." Commandment No. l0. "The key to successful campaign consulting is to work for winners." In general, as I have already noted, the insights gained from my academic experiences have been invaluable in my understanding of the noble possibilities of American democracy; and the "lessons learned" from consulting opened my eyes to what really goes on -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- in the political world. In particular, political science gave me advance understanding of such things as pluralism, leadership, and southern politics which I otherwise would have had to develop through experience -- bad experience that unfortunately would have entailed significant battle scars and lost opportunities. I carried many of these insights and lessons into my life as a philosopher-politician. MY "AMERICAN DREAM". My academic background and political career, combined, have given me a unique perspective for analyzing American democracy. However, perhaps the most important contribution I bring to our national dialogue is personal. It will sound overly dramatic, but I am living the American dream -- I have risen from poverty and tragedy to enjoy the full blessings of American life. Along the way I've learned some things -- as a human being -- about America and American democracy, and I think that I can contribute personally to our discussion about the future of our national experiment in democratic ideals. Rest assured, I do not plan to make my personal life the maudlin framework of this manuscript. "Is America Dying?" is primarily a theoretical and political analysis -- based on my perspectives as a political scientist and public official. But my life story inevitably colors that analysis in such a way that I think I should explain my version of the American dream. My dream began dismally and tragically, about a half century ago, on the wrong side of the tracks in a small southern town -- a world of what was known back then as "poor white trash". My birth certificate shows that Johnnie Glenn Browder was born on January l5, l943, in Sumter, South Carolina, the third child of Archie Calvin Browder, a 29-year-old house painter, and his 2l-year-old wife Ila; and an official South Carolina death shows that Archie Browder died a year later of "smoke asphyxiation" due to an "accident" in a "public jail". As with most public documents, those official accounts cannot begin to tell the personal drama of our flawed family and social desperation. I never asked much about my father while I was growing up -- mainly because I figured that this was an awkward and painful subject for my family. But in recent years, my mother (and other relatives) have shared their memories in response to my questions about how he lived and died. What I've learned is what I'd always suspected -- my father was no Atticus Finch. Archie Browder probably would have been right at home as a minor character in a William Faulkner novel. The son of an alcoholic father and a straight-laced mother, Archie dropped out of school in the ninth grade and became a sometimes house painter with wavy red hair, a charming personality, a bad drinking habit, and a destructively irresponsible lifestyle. Toward the end of the l930s Great Depression, twenty-four-year-old Archie took a fifteen-year-old bride. Ila Frierson came from even purer Faulknerian origins. She was born and reared in the Carolina backwoods in a Snopes-like family -- a bad-tempered, moonshine-making, sharecropper father, a mother who died young, two stepmothers, and a swarm of twenty children if you count whole and half, living and dead, siblings. ("There were so many of us; and we weren't a real close family because of my mean daddy, three mamas, and the age differences between all the children.") She had virtually no education. ("All of us had to help at home and work in the fields, so I missed more days than I went to school; I finally quit school in the third grade.") She still harbors bad memories of her father. ("Daddy was a mean, mean man. He'd get drunk and beat us if we did anything he didn't like.") S he married to get away from the hard-scrabble existence of farm life. ("We didn't have anything; we were like those people you see in old movies about the depression. I got out as soon as I could.") Unfortunately, her life wasn't going to get much better for a long time. The Browder family (Archie, Ila, Billy, A.C., and Glen) lived in a shabby one-room house that they rented from a black woman-owner who lived next door in a bad section of Sumter. My father never worked regularly; so my mother sometimes clerked at a fruitstand down the street in order to help pay our family bills. I was too young to remember my father or any of this; but according to all accounts, ours was a seriously troubled household. One weekend in mid-January of l944, Ila and the boys took off unexpectedly to visit relatives in nearby Manning. Archie came to Manning in a bad mood and quickly wound up in jail for a mixture of minor transgressions -- maybe public drinking, maybe domestic problems, maybe his reputation. Whatever the reasons, he appeared to be smoking in his cell-bed when the fire broke out, filling his lungs with scorching heat and smoke. A family friend came to Ila with the message that Archie had been injured in the fire, took my mother to the jail to get her husband, and transported them all in his pickup truck back to the hospital in Sumter. After a week of semi-conscious suffering, my father was dead. He left behind a twenty-two year old widow and three small boys (ages five, three, and one) -- all of us dependent on the charity of relatives, friends, and public welfare. Thus began, in classic manner, my American dream. I grew up in Sumter, a regional Black Belt town of about 25,000 population, between Columbia and Charleston. Although I left South Carolina thirty years ago, I still consider that area as "home" -- my family and old friends still live there; the father that I never knew is buried there; and I find myself going back about once a year to renew relationships and just to ride around and see what used to be. Sumter was like many southern towns of the l940s, l950s, and l960s, projecting gentility and progress despite burgeoning problems of poverty and race. It had a military installation (Shaw Air Force Base) with a sizeable contingent of "outsiders', a progressive city government (supposedly one of the first city manager systems in the country), a respectable daily newspaper (the Sumter Daily Item), several radio stations (including a "good music" station), an active business community, many civic-professional-social organizations, the "world famous Iris Gardens", a beautiful country club, an active community playhouse, and several movie houses. We had a decent public education system (at least for whites); and there was even a small black church school (Morris College) supported in great part by the local white community. Our troubled family was poor by all standards, so we never experienced Southern gentility and progress. After Archie Browder's death, my mother refused a social worker's suggestion that the three Browder kids be put in a local orphanage. America was fully engaged in World War II, and she took a job as a laborer in a machinery shop making metal parts for battleships. With that work and the help of family and Social Security, she moved us into a small rental house near a furniture factory. After the war, she waitressed in a local cafe, where she met and married another, steadier man, Charlton McLeod -- just returned home from combat in far off Europe -- with a similarly rural background and even less formal education. Three more children swelled the family to eight people living in poverty and cramped quarters on the wrong side of town. My stepfather and my mother both worked hard -- he as a machine-worker in furniture mills and she as a seamstress in various operations such as furniture upholstering, dress-making, even sewing the silk interior of burial caskets. We moved frequently, wherever we could find cheap rent, mainly near the mills, along with the other "have-nots" of southern life. The only way that things could have been worse would have been if we were black, or mixed, like the people we called "turks" (I don't know if we had any basis for calling them that other than the fact that they were too dark to call "white" and too light to call "colored"). My parents lived simply and honestly. They went to church off-and-on; they took care of their kids; and they paid their bills. They steered away from the drinking, gambling, and carousing so often associated with impoverished southerners, and they generally conducted themselves with a dignity that I could only appreciate as I matured into adulthood. Ours was a 2-in-l family -- the McLeods and the Browders. Charlton McLeod (my stepfather) and Ila Browder McLeod (my mother), the three older Browder brothers (Billy, A.C., and Glen), the three younger McLeod kids (Janice, Larry, and Stanley) all lived fairly happily if not wealthily. But the Browders were, in a way, apart. The Browder boys called Charlton "Charlton" (unlike the McLeod kids who called him "Daddy"); and we spent much of our time outside the family -- fishing, hunting, playing ball, getting into devilment -- without a lot of supervision. We were "steps" or "halfs"; and although we never said so, we felt that we were different and to an extent on our own. This independence was not all fun and games. It sounds like Huckleberry Finn, but it felt more like Oliver Twist. With no disrespect to my parents, I knew that I had to hustle if I were going to have anything extra. Selling peanuts and fish bait, rounding up soft drink bottles and scrap iron, even picking cotton, I did it all. The worst job I ever had was delivering newspapers -- getting up at five in the morning, seven days a week, 365 days a year, in the freezing cold and rain, before going to school. I started out at four dollars a week. A three dollar weekly payment -- for 25 weeks -- on the bicycle that I had to buy in order to deliver the papers didn't leave much spending money, but it was more than I would have had otherwise. I have to confess that I sometimes resembled Artful Dodger more than Oliver Twist. I stole things -- not for the thrill but because I had so little and couldn't afford anything. Things like candy and apples, belts, gloves, a hat, even shotgun shells. I am sorry that I did so and I am grateful that I did not get caught. For most of my childhood, I felt the continuous sting of self-consciousness and shame about who I was and where I lived and not having what others had. School was a special disaster. Although we lived on the bad side of town, I walked with my brothers to the city elementary school attended by kids from all over Sumter. On rare occasions I went home with uptown friends for short visits after school, to their houses in good neighborhoods, with lawns and doorbells; but they never came home with me to my side of town. Everyday was an ego-buster in some way. Getting reduced or free lunch, not having the right notebooks or pencils or whatever was needed for class, getting stuff from the Salvation Army, and never having your parents participating in PTA and school events. My appearance and self-perception didn't help either -- a red-haired, freckle-faced, scruffy kid from over near the mill. On top of all of this, I was especially shy. I went through the entire first grade being called "Johnnie" (the first name on my birth certificate) rather than "Glen" because I was too shy and self-conscious to straighten it out. I felt completely uncomfortable and out of place. As a result, I often played hooky -- even in the first, second, and third grades -- which only made things worse when I would show up and embarrass myself by not having done my homework or not knowing what the class was doing. Then something happened that began to turn my entire life around. We moved to another part of Sumter (still on the wrong side of the tracks) and I started going to Wilder Elementary School. Wilder was a wonderful place for poor kids -- located on our own side of town, run by kind and sensitive teachers, and bossed by a big, loud, white-haired, heart-of-gold woman principal -- Miss Ruby Gallman. Every young person at Wilder was in the same socio-economic fix -- mill children, farm children, even white trash -- but no rich kids. I blossomed. I quit playing hooky and started making good grades. Pretty much straight "A"s through the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. I even became a school leader -- class president, captain of the safety patrol, president of 4-H, and so on. I also discovered that teachers and administrators, people who lived on the right side of town, people I didn't even know, were interested in helping me. Miss Frances Pendarvis treated me like a first-class citizen and inspired me academically. Miss Mary E. Johnson -- a beautiful person who held my ten-year-old mind and heart in her hand -- got her roommate (Miss Margaret Wolfe, whom I had never met) to pay for me to take music lessons. Mrs. James (I don't remember her first name) tactfully loaned me a pair of her son's dress pants to wear to an "uptown" May Day event. The most memorable "good deed" was when Sumter sent selected safety patrol leaders from all its elementary schools to Washington, DC, for a long weekend. Miss Gallman called me into her office and gave me a motherly talk -- and she put three dollars in my hand. That may not sound like much money; but without Miss Gallman and her three dollars, I would have gone a thousand miles roundtrip and spent three days in our national capital without a cent in my pocket. As it worked out, I was able to enjoy myself and buy gifts for everyone in my family. In fact, I can think of teachers throughout my school days -- beyond Wilder -- who helped prepare me for a better life through personal kindness and inspiration as well as book-learning. The aforementioned Miss Wolfe later became my high school homeroom teacher, with a pretty, beaming face and encouraging words. (I also developed a schoolboy crush on her although she was Mrs. Margaret Edens by that time.) Miss Cassie Nichols (a sweet little lady) introduced me to journalism and mentored me as editor of the high school newspaper. I never played any varsity sport in high school, but Mr. Sandy Hershey, our football coach (who also taught my psychology class), forever imprinted in my consciousness the principle that, whatever you do or want to do, "you gotta pay the price!" Miss Catherine Bass (who taught me Latin) and Miss Ethel Burnett (a school administrator) took a personal interest in my well-being and helped me get a college scholarship. At Presbyterian College, Mr. Ben Hay Hammett (whom I worked for in the Public Relations Department) and his wife Jane virtually adopted me into their family. Most of these good people have gone on to their heavenly rewards. But I want to say something to them and countless others anyway. "Thank you! You taught me that even poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks can enjoy the blessings of American life." Overall, my childhood memories, while stark, are wrapped in a positive retrospective fuzz, partly because of nostalgia and partly because those experiences made all of us stronger and better. The fact is that the Browders and McLeods did pretty well under the circumstances. We survived. And our family realizes that "we had to go there to get here". Somewhat surprisingly considering my later public career, I never thought about government and politics as a child. My family was totally non-political. I do not recall my parents ever voting or even talking about public affairs -- except for the Supreme Court's l954 desegregation ruling. I guess I picked up some academic interest in government through school; and I developed a fascination with public affairs when I started delivering newspapers. I would sit there on the curb and read, while selling or folding The State (out of Columbia, South Carolina) every day; and somehow I got hooked. But I did a lot of thinking as a child -- I don't know why -- about inherently philosophical things such as family, religion, ethics, even such abstracts as time, space, and relationships. I recall playing hooky from school and climbing up a tall tree, sitting there all day -- no books, no toys, no food, just looking across my neighborhood world and thinking about things. I probably am one of the few people in America who would play hooky from school and spend the day in the nearby public library. Sometimes, that philosophical thinking and dreaming led to inner-conflict and frustration. I had a sense of doing something good and special with my life, but I felt mired in the muck of my immediate environment. I was just a kid yearning to be somebody, knowing that there was something more somewhere out there in America; but I also faced everyday realities. And I was tempted by self-limiting options -- pursuing the attractions and vices of our working class world, perhaps quitting school, perhaps getting a no-future job so that I could do and have the things that my brothers and friends were enjoying. I went through an especially troubled stage during those early adolescent years. My self-confidence took a beating as I moved from Wilder elementary school to the more upscale and pressurized environment of Sumter's junior high school. Fortunately, at this critical time, I plunged into my paper route career -- adding a little structure and cash to my existence; and an older friend (Jimmy Mathis) provided some direction and friendship that bolstered my confidence. That structure and friendship, along with the help of caring teachers and revived academic performance, put me firmly back on the road to the blessings and benefits of American life. Sumter will always be special to me, but I decided early on that life was more than working in the mill on the wrong side of town. I did not know how or when, but I figured that, eventually, I would move far beyond those railroad tracks. Like most southern communities of that time, Sumter was a white town (despite the fact that about forty percent of the county was black). Especially in the Black Belt (named such because of the rich black earth and large black slave population of Old South plantation days), society was highly structured by class (rich and poor) and caste (white and black). Poor whites were around, but they stayed in their place socially; and blacks were still pretty much invisible, hidden in rural and out-of-the-way areas. There was no physical wall or river separating poor whites and blacks from Sumter proper; but there were the railroad tracks. The tracks ran east and west. North of the tracks was OK; all the good areas and aforementioned institutions of progressive Sumter (such as the air force base, the newspaper, etc.) were on that side of town. To the south were the mills and millworkers and black community. On Saturday mornings, Main Street was a bustling white business area; southward across the bridge and over the railroad tracks, Main Street turned into Manning Avenue, a similarly busy stretch of working class white and black grocery stores, car lots, and funeral homes. Despite the thoroughness of segregation, it is one of the ironies of Sumter and southern life that many whites and blacks, especially poor whites and blacks, knew each other, in a limited and demeaning way, personally and sometimes warmly. The two races and mixed people lived relatively together, albeit in patches, mainly on our side of the tracks. We saw each other daily, passing along the street on our way to school or work, working side-by-side in the mill, sometimes even playing baseball together in the fields. Furthermore, even among poor whites, black domestics worked in many of our homes, helping with the washing, ironing, cooking, and child-tending. In a strange way, these limited and demeaning relationships of the past have helped today's southerners of both races come to terms with their troubled history. As far back as I can remember, my family lived on the same streets and in the same neighborhoods as did blacks. We had a string of black domestic help -- "Mammy", "Emma", and "Pat" -- with the personal bonds that inevitably develop under such circumstances. Later on, when I took a newspaper route, I worked and played, on a limited basis, with my black friends "Brother", "Wash", and "Burrell"; and I delivered papers and collected payments throughout parts of the black community. As a broad generalization, however, whites and blacks in the south did not socialize together (except for furtive and unmentionable liaisons). We went to different schools, different churches, different restaurants, different movies (although blacks could sit in the balcony of the white theaters) -- different everything. The following anecdote conveys the nature of the caste system of that time in southern society: It seems that two boys, similar in age, grew up during the l940s and l950s in the same small town. They went through the public school system and graduated from high school at about the same time in that town. Interestingly, both eventually would run for statewide public office -- Secretary of State -- in the same year; and one would win narrowly while the other would lose narrowly. More interestingly, eventually both would run for, get elected to, and serve together -- as members of the same party -- in the United States House of Representatives. Incredibly, they met and introduced themselves to each other, for the first time in their lives, on the floor of Congress. That is a true story. James E. Clyburn, who is black, and I both grew up in Sumter, but we never knew each other there. He attended all-black Lincoln High School and I went to all-white Edmunds High School . He stayed in South Carolina while I moved on to Alabama (the respective states of our electoral careers), and we ended up serving together as congressmen in our nation's capitol. Beyond this strange anecdote about our common backgrounds, I see striking parallels between Jim Clyburn and myself as public officials. Most obviously, we both overcame the handicap of our backgrounds to launch successful political careers. We started our public lives in state government before going to Congress; and we worked for reform at both levels. Neither of us has been extreme in philosophy or behavior; and we worked successfully within the system. I'm a relatively conservative Democrat and he's from the relatively liberal side of our party; but we both reached across party, racial, and philosophical chasms on important issues. Most interesting to me is that, although Jim and I never met until that day on the floor of Congress, we were able to bridge our historic racial divide rather effortlessly; and we worked together on several important political problems in Washington -- such as bringing the Blue Dogs (mainly white southerners) and Black Caucus (mainly black southerners) together on the church burning issue. The fact that white southerners and black southerners can come together on political issues should not be surprising -- consider the relationships between Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and even George Wallace with black politicians and constituencies. But what I saw and felt with Jim Clyburn was more than a political opportunity -- I sensed in him a special kindred spirit. Perhaps it helped that we grew up -- together and apart -- back in Sumter! Jim Clyburn and I will never know where that special relationship might have led, since I'm no longer in Congress and our lives are separated by different careers and thousands of miles. However, we still talk about Sumter, American democracy, and the American dream. In retrospect, perhaps the most interesting, intriguing, puzzling aspect of my young life is the fact that I grew up in a time and place and environment of intense national significance -- the civil rights revolution -- without any apparent passion or personal involvement. I sometimes wonder -- with all my thinking about things as a young person -- "Why?" How could anybody grow up in the south of that time without any active engagement, any life-altering experiences, or at least some dramatic memories from the civil rights movement? Of course, I recognized the tragic and changing history of black-white relations in the South. I felt sorry for black people, individually and collectively, and I treated them kindly in our limited relationships. For example, I had chosen fairly early to substitute the term "colored" for our societal reference to "niggers"; and I recall once being reprimanded as a teenager for addressing a black woman as "Mrs." and for saying "yes ma'am" to her. But I accepted, without overtly or emotionally or actively racist motives, that whites and blacks lived different lives and that we and our lives were "better" than them and their lives. The bottom line is that I never actively challenged the system. I guess part of the "why" is that our town was not a high profile battleground of black-white tension or activity as were some neighboring areas and hotspots throughout the South. Adjacent Clarendon County was one of the original parties of the landmark l954 school desegregation case; and we had some sit-in demonstrations involving students from the local black college and some rumblings by the Klan. But Sumter never made the headlines as did places like Orangeburg, Selma, and Birmingham. Thus the civil rights revolution minimally impacted our community consciousness while I was growing up. Most people -- white and black -- in our area went about their segregated lives relatively quietly. I was in elementary school in l954 when the Supreme Court declared school integration the law of the land; and I graduated from a still totally segregated public school system in l96l. Sumter continued to be a "white town" for years to come. Moreover, my part of society -- the world of "poor white trash" -- was particularly isolated from such activities and movements. The civil rights struggle basically was a fight between black activists and prominent white political, business, and religious leaders; and the fight generally was waged on the good side of town. Somewhat like the outcast black "non-citizens" of that time, poor whites weren't asked and didn't participate in public affairs (except when the issue exploded into mob actions and-or Klan gatherings). In fact, I cannot recall a single civil rights incident involving anyone or anything or any place in my neighborhood; apparently nobody wanted to integrate with us. Besides, on a more personal level, I had enough problems of my own. I was too engaged in my own struggle against adversity to worry about racial segregation. The truth, then, is that I was an acquiescent product of my Deep South culture. I proceeded, as did many otherwise decent people, through the civil rights revolution with insensate accommodation to the southern way of life. I busied myself with my own personal struggle fairly oblivious to perhaps the most consequential movement of modern American history. That's not something to brag about or agonize over -- it's just what happened, and it is part of my story. So, how did these early factors -- my family, poverty, segregation, school, work -- affect my personal, political, and philosophical outlook as an adult? I'm sure that psycho-historians can spin an entertaining tale about my family background (just as they have done with Bill Clinton); and they probably would be right. I never really appreciated while I was growing up the influence of my father's life and death on my life and personality; but now I realize that the ghost of Archie Calvin Browder drove me -- sometimes consciously but most of the time unconsciously -- to rise above my origins, to be something special, to do something positive with my life. Very simply, my early experiences made me sensitive to social, economic, racial, and other disadvantages; but they also gave me hope, ambition, and drive. Interestingly, they did not make me very bitter or cynical; nor did I become overly emotional, partisan or ideological. Instead, over the course of many years, I developed a strong sense of personal and civic responsibility and an independent, methodical approach to things. I knew that I had a long, tough road to travel; but I also figured that, with perseverance and patience, I might get to the top of the hill, where I could "do good" for myself and others. This outlook has been, in many but not all ways, an asset throughout my life and especially in my academic and political careers. Clearly, then, my family background and developing outlook pointed me toward the American dream, and I followed that dream. As a young adult, I was a consuming dreamer, taking full advantage of my opportunities -- a solid education, a good job, decent pay -- all in all, a pretty good life. Later, as a thirty-something professor with a wife, young daughter, and a new home and ten acres on a wooded mountain in Alabama, I began developing a more structured understanding of the essential nature of "America". It would be another decade before I engaged, fully, as a contributing civic partner in the American system. Throughout all these stages, however, I never forgot my origins -- and the lessons I learned -- on the wrong side of the tracks. Thus, I have lived and continue to live the American dream; and I have almost mystical confidence in American democracy. But after decades of experience and introspection, I am concerned about whether America is working for today's young people -- and future Americans -- the way that it worked for me. I do not pretend that my "poor boy" story entitles me to impose my own personalized interpretation of "America" on our nation. Nor do I think that the essence of the American dream is a massive public or governmental program to cater to the needs and interests of the "National Association of Poor Boys of America". My work as a public official and political scientist taught me long ago the realities and limitations of American government and politics. In short, I do not subscribe to the knee-jerk, bleeding-heart, big-government political philosophy. However, my personal experience has kept me sensitive to "America" as a national experiment in democratic ideals; and it has attuned me to "American democracy" as the process that allows all of us to pursue those ideals. My personal background has added a special perspective -- from the heart -- to go along with my political and theoretical thinking about the nature and workings of the American system. In other words, I see historic America and American democracy as synonymously integral to an "equal opportunity American dream". But now I wonder: Is America still alive and well? Does American democracy still allow poor little boys -- and poor little girls, and old people, and sick people, and blacks, browns, yellows, reds, and all other colors and creeds and ideas -- to pursue those ideals? Do the American people still accept sufficient individual and collective responsibility for helping everybody and anybody chase the American dream? Is America still a national experiment in democratic ideals? Or is America just a giant pyramid scheme? Is America nothing more than a successful political game that has worked very well for two centuries -- because of its favorable environment and good management -- but which now is playing itself out? Is America just an attractive racket whose winners are the many generations of Americans who got in-and-out (with disproportionate blessings and benefits of American democracy) in timely fashion? Has America become a winning proposition just for privileged people who are positioned to take advantage of the game? Is America now a failing political operation for too many citizens? What about the growing number of Americans, especially younger citizens, who simply have lost interest in the old political order? Why are so many Americans talking about investing in new and different political schemes? In short, has my American dream turned into a nightmare for today's generation? I will try to resist excessive psycho-babbling; this manuscript is, essentially, about American democracy -- not my American dream. My rhetorical proclamation about "dying" America is more than nostalgic pining for the good old days. My central purpose is a theoretical and political analysis, a proposition that serious social, technological, and political developments have changed -- and will continue to change -- American democracy and America in important and unhealthy ways. But the reader should be forewarned of the lingering question, somewhere in the back of my mind, throughout this analysis: "How does this systemic development or that particular proposal -- or even my own paradigm for 'New America' -- affect the ability of today's little Johnnie Glenn Browders to cross those tracks to the American dream?" |
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