Choosing the right leadership in government

How about those Boston Red Sox! The success of New England’s favorite team represents more than just a championship for a major league baseball franchise. It represents a model for competent leadership. If only we could see this type of leadership in government.

Recently, I was a participant in a teleconference hosted by Sen. Susan Collins, in which I had the opportunity to listen in on citizens’ comments and questions. The deep level of concern and frustration expressed by those involved was striking. One such participant, an elderly lady from Caribou, and friend of the senator, spoke of her distress over not having a regular doctor for the past five years. She also was very concerned for Aroostook County’s drug-addicted young people, who are unable to find treatment locally.

A Fort Fairfield educator expressed great sadness and concern for the children she teaches – many of whom have parents serving in Iraq – who are not getting basic needs met, and whose futures are being jeopardized by common sense-less No Child Left Behind guidelines.

Bob Tracy, of Bangor, a 26-year veteran with the Air National Guard, shared his displeasure concerning the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent overseas, while at home, our middle class is being dismantled, by an unfair tax system, the influence of special interests and a greedy oil industry.

A palpable sense of desperation was evident in the voice of most every person involved in this teleconference. And while Sen. Collins was very empathetic and considerate in her responses to them, one couldn’t help but come away with the sense that a majority of Mainers remain deeply dissatisfied with our leaders, and that our nation is very much on the wrong track.

In a recent address to a national radio audience, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich identified the cause of our nation’s many ills: the big money influence of special interest groups. A war is being waged against our democracy, said Reich, by an army of lobbyists, whose sole mission is to gain greater influence and greater return on investment – the common good be damned.

Reich’s assessment continued. Things will not get better in this country as long as the existing political establishment, with its political action committee war chests, retains its power.

Why is this? Because its political DNA is hardwired by and for special interest groups and corporations.

Change, he asserts, will not occur from within. The needed transformation will be facilitated only when regular citizens decide they’ve had enough and begin electing outsider candidates. It seems however, very few qualified outsider candidates for Congress exist. But exist they do.

I am one such individual, willing to take on the political establishment, to help restore equilibrium to a system that is dangerously out of balance.

I represent in ideology, and in practice, the common Maine citizen. I am not a lawyer. I am not a materially wealthy person. I, like most other people living in Maine, have struggled to make ends meet, and to provide care for my family, while the government demonstrates preferential treatment toward powerful special interests – interests that enjoy unprecedented influence upon our nation’s public policy.

Additionally, new information surfaces every day, regarding the tens of billions of dollars lost to waste and fraud in Iraq, to the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, and with other less obvious taxpayer fleecings. Yet in most places in this country, our children are still served fast food for school lunch, our veterans have to fight to receive the benefits they deserve, our seniors are forced to choose between food and medication, our young adults are saddled with staggering amounts of educational debt, our disabled are left to fend for themselves, our prisons are overcrowded, our inner city and rural school systems are ignored, our manufacturing jobs are exported, our farms are becoming extinct, our lives are becoming more stressful, and our citizenry is losing its faith.

We should remain confident however, that these problems can be solved. We are a creative nation.

We need only take note of how the Boston Red Sox transformed themselves into world champions; while recognizing that the people who make up Red Sox Nation could not, on their own, accomplish the transformation. They needed the right leadership.

In the same way, Americans must now elect new, more courageous leadership to help transform our nation; to reprioritize spending, and invest in our own people, for this season, and for seasons to come.

Thomas Cornelius Mooney of Bangor is seeking the Republican nomination for Maine’s 2nd Congressional district. He can be contacted at IAmTomMooney@yahoo.com.