How I Learned About Politics
I was twelve years old at the time of the mayoral race in New York City. While I certainly didn't understand it all, I remember all the players and the city they were talking to. That's why The Buckley Effect resonates so strongly for me, I guess. It's a fascinating article in its own right, but its effect on mee was like that of a kid who finally learns, years later, what all those half-heard and half-comprehended arguments between her parents were all about. And weirdly enough, reading the article reminds me that I miss New York politics. I get New York politics. I'm still working on the San Francisco politics thing, and in the oddest way this article made me feel homesick.
posted by Madeleine Robins at 7:33 AM
4 Comments:
I'm still learning SF politics. My understanding now is that they're hopelessly corrupt, adn always ahve been; one of the things that the '06 earthquake revealed was the shoddy construction that had been done on the government dime.
The Chronicle exposes are horrifying -- schools without any heat at all, police records that are among the worst in the country as far as % of crimes solved and prosecuted. This seems to be taken for granted.
NY politics are not exactly known for their, um, lack of corruption. But they just feel different to me. And New York rarely indulges in government by proposition, which is a system which (to me) makes no sense to me. The annual alphabet-soup of propositions come election day make my head swim.
The theory (this I learned in high school) was Good Government. The People would produce legislation that was not corrupted by the legislature. Same with recalls. The purpose was to make the government more responsive to the people.
You'd have to get a native Californian for the decade in which the corporations figured out that they could submit propositions of their own through a puppet and all Hell broke loose.
I dunno. Spouse and I keep muttering to ourselves about what exactly our legislative representatives are doing, if we're all making laws ourselves. And, as you say, anybody can float a prop...then you get duelling propositions and all those advertisements where accusations of corporate backing are flung happily from guggle to zatch.
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