While closing my last post an old song popped into my head: “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” Not being a big country music fan I had to Google it to learn who sang it and when it came out (see the YouTube link here –the song definitely dates me).
In Illinois, big donors or other would-be leaders continue to spend a great deal of time going to local GOP meetings and other events where they are expecting to find solutions. The only problem is they are not going to find solutions there.
I do know individuals that attend a lot of political events, and they have good reasons to do so. I also know these folks are not expecting much from those gatherings. The events serve a useful purpose such as for important networking.
Illinois is not still screwed up because we lack enough talented, smart, well-meaning and good people. What we lack is for those people to be told what has to be done to turn this state purple, then red.
The larger problem on our side is hubris on the part of the donor class and other would be leaders. Here is just one definition of the word:
Hubris often shows up when someone overestimates their abilities or importance.
It happens when pride makes someone ignore risks or advice.
Hubris typically results in negative consequences, such as failure or loss.
Actual hubris can be proven at several levels. It can be at a low level, where, say, a group of donors get together and fund this or that effort. Often those projects have merit and do some good. But the donors and those running them never figure out the limits of what they are doing. And even if those efforts succeed wildly, the end result is still what I call micro wonderfulness.
Towards the higher end of the proving-hubris-spectrum, tens of millions of dollars get raised and spent on activities that also produce little to no change. Some of these leave an impressive paper trail of lovely policy studies that may have been read by a few people. Or maybe they leave a bookshelf full of video ads that might have been seen by a few people. The writers and producers of these materials probably made a good living, but politically speaking, they also amount to just more micro wonderfulness.
Let me warn you now that you will not read about on these pages what I know to be the solution. Why? The political arena in Illinois contains nefarious individuals whose focus is on getting rich and/or becoming a political chieftain. Those desires separate them from the ability to successfully accomplish the work.
How do I know this? Because over the past decade I have been in meetings with many of them where simple concepts were discussed—and they could not grasp them. Or at least they could not figure out how to make money from them or become a political VIP through them.
I am too old to be nice. I prefer to speak for those whose economic opportunities have suffered, whose taxes are very high in order to fund corruption, and for those whose families get split up because the hunt for a better life forces family members to relocate to red states.
Up next: Searching for Willie Brown.
Image credit: The Civil War could not be won until President Lincoln realized he was looking for something–in his case, military leadership–in all the wrong places. Here he is with the eventually twice-fired General McClellan at the Antietam Battlefield, Maryland. The photo is from the Library of Congress.
