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More About Mike
Peace Corps and After
Questions and Answers
Thoughts at Large
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| Thoughts at Large |
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| Some reflections on Auburn and how it got this way... |
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| Woodrow Wilson said that people in public life aren't so much bad as they are afraid. Afraid of what, he didn't know, but he thought it was mostly shadows. He could have been talking about Auburn. In nearly 20 years of watching Auburn lurch from one thing to another, I've noticed that fear is the most convenient excuse for inaction. Fear of what? Reprisals? Mockery? What is it that predisposes us to hunker down rather than to stand up and be counted? DeKalb County was, in large part, settled by Pennsylvania Germans, people who valued order and respected authority. They weren't New Englanders with the New England traditions of town meetings and rugged independence of conscience. Nor were they Quakers raised to "speak truth to power." They were solid, hard-working folks who minded their own business, which was usually farming. On the one hand, these ancestors of ours were a tolerant bunch. They believed in "live and let live." But they also tended to keep their emotions and their opinions to themselves. If they didn't much stick their noses into other people's business, neither did they much regard public business as their business. For the most part, they paid their taxes and kept their mouths shut. They created a more or less peaceable community, but they didn't create a closely-knit one. I think that this traditional "inwardness" either reflected or created a kind of community-wide inferiority complex that we inherited. Too many of us seem to think that somebody else has the right answers and that we'll only make fools of ourselves if we so much as ask a question. And of course, we would never question the other guy's good intentions, would we? If we noticed that Mayor X or Commissioner Y might personally benefit from a particular course of action, we'd be too polite to mention it. And too scared. Our local tendency toward inwardness is aggravated by Indiana's general political culture. Indiana politics was always about handing out jobs rather than promoting civic responsibility. The progressive tide that gave other states voter initiative and referendum passed us by. Bossism, not populism, dominated both parties. In Auburn, there was another circumstance that shaped a culture of political passivity: the presence of perfectly huge amounts of money in the hands of local industrial families and their retainers. Most, like the Eckharts, were wonderfully generous. Their gifts created and shaped our community insititutions...and also put us further into the habit of letting them have things their way. The coming -- and going -- of the Auburn Automobile Company -- added yet another wrinkle to the prune of Auburn's civic life. If Charles Eckhart, devoutly religious and unburdened by income taxes, believed that great wealth imposed great responsibility, his successors, like the free-booting E.L. Cord, mostly believed in the main chance. Eckhart made Auburn his home and wanted to be remembered for his probity and his good deeds. For Cord, Auburn was an episode in a career of high finance and shareholder wars. He simply wanted to be rich. Even without Cord's influence, Auburn's public life would probably have had a "managerial" flavor. Executives get appointed to things. The people who run companies usually run churches, foundations and local government. Their subordinates at work don't disagree with them; and when they're transplanted to the public sector they tend to view criticism as insubordination. They experience deep frustration when they find that they can't fire the public. Auburn is now too big to expect the public to buy the notion that a small bunch of people know what's best for the rest of us, but the baggage of a passive political tradition still holds us back. My campaign for Mayor is based squarely on the idea that Auburn is ready for democracy: that we no longer need to be hostages to any political party, corporation or special interest. We can be -- to use the words of Robert F. Kennedy -- whatever "the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle" can make us. We can disagree. We can argue. We can learn from one another. We can govern ourselves. I'm not running for Mayor because I think there's just one way to do things and that I know what it is. I'm running for Mayor so that I can open doors. Sure, there are some projects very dear to my heart; but I'm not dumb enough to think that they're beyond debate or compromise. But if we let democracy work; if we treat each other with fairness and respect, what we build together will be solid. The great Satchel Paige said it best: "None of us is as smart as all of us."  |
| Auburn, | IN | 46706-0267 |
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