Steven Douglas Maloney

Posts Tagged ‘Good Politicians’

Very rarely do I openly endorse politicians, but I am making an exception in publicly endorsing Frank Kratovil for MD – 1.  I feel it is a reasonable exception for two reasons. Reason number one is that I ive nowhere nead MD-1 and have no intention of ever leaving Minneapolis. The second reason is that I left the Democratic Party when I was in college because as I got more and more involved in Maryland politics, I got more and more disillusioned with the lack of intellectual curiosity politicians had. I have since learned not to blame them, they have an utter minefield of pressures to navigate at any given moment. However, I realized that I was at least more idealistic to the point where I wanted to think of what was good for socieites of human beings beyond what politicians can or would do for them on their own. So, goodbye party membership – hello long road to understanding political theory better.

There were a (precious) few people I did meet in politics who struck me as in it for the right reasons when I met them. Some, like Senator Cardin, I only met at formal events once or twice – so while I was impressed, I could hardly vouch for them with any degree of meaning. On the other hand, I met Frank Kratovil in Maryland Young Democrats. When you are involved in youth politics, grinding lemons into lemonade by hand to raise money at a local fair, phone-banking, participating in Christmas in April on behalf of some party chapter or another, you develop a very strong sense of why anyone would do all of that “paying your dues” work and why.

Frank had a strong commitment to what he believes to be justice, not generally, but with a sense of depth and substance that only someonewho really cares about justice would have. Frank’s values are not simply values that were “talking points,” they were well-reasoned by someone who spends his time thinking about how to make our society – a fair system of cooperation – more fair and more prosperous. Some people don’t care about justice, some people pretend to care but don’t, some people think they care but don’t put in the time to truly take it seriously, and some people spend their time doing mindless, thoughtless grunt-work, grinding through the system until its your turn so that they can get their shot to try and defend and expand what is good about life in our polity. And while they do – they tell you about the things in the world that they don’t think are right that they are grinding those lemons for and harassing the elderly with 6pm campaign calls for.

Frank Kratovil has grinded it out in Democratic Party politics,but that’s not why he deserves his turn. I believe he deserves his turn because I believe that he carries the genuine concenr of doing what is right in a way that is neither shallow, nor naive. If you don’t believe me, you should at least believe former Congressman Gilchrist, who has crossed party lines to endorse him.