THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040695
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DECISION '96
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STETSON, SPECIAL TO THE PILOT
LENGTH: 69 lines
Once again, as voters prepare for the upcoming presidential and congressional elections, many complain that something is missing from the political campaigns. While listening to candidates try to differentiate themselves from their opponents, citizens frequently note that the real issues and public concerns either go unrecognized or are only superficially addressed. Frustrated by the perception that the public good has been sold out to special interest groups, these citizens wonder whether their participation in the political process even makes a difference.
What is lacking from the political scene? Is it that political candidates have failed to stay in tune with what their constituents care about? Political journalist George F. Will writes that while present-day politicians are more responsive to public opinion than ever, our government functions on clout rather than deliberation.
Although many would be grateful if special interests were no longer wielding so much clout with Congress or other levels of government, one must still wonder, where is the public's voice? Aren't elections supposed to be about defining the issues the public determines are of the highest priority? How do we as individual citizens and voters recognize ourselves as part of a ``public''?
Throughout our history as a republic, much has been written and discussed pertaining to the structure and roles of public officials. Although our founders carefully crafted the various layers of federal government and vested the power of selection and accountability as the right of the people being governed, since then little attention has been paid to the citizen's role. High school civics classes teach soon-to-be voters about government structure and voting to select officeholders. Rarely do emerging young adults learn how to engage in public discourse to help bring about changes in one's community.
David Mathews, president of the Kettering Foundation, points out that citizens need to meet face to face in public spaces in order to ``hammer out their purposes through ongoing, deliberative dialogue.'' By this, Mathews is not talking about debate, where the objective is to win an argument by persuading others to accept a particular point of view. Instead, Mathews proposes citizens need to cultivate public deliberation. When diverse groups of citizens deliberate together, Mathews says they learn what is most valuable to them as a public.
When citizens take responsibility and work in a collaborative effort to help solve local problems, they create a public voice based on knowledge that did not previously exist. Such public knowledge can only be discovered when citizens share their experiences and concerns to identify common purposes and motivations.
Citizens are the lifeblood of a democracy. Without an engaged and informed citizenry, public officials cannot know their constituents' priorities because there is no public voice. In a democracy, the citizen's role is to help provide direction that will enable the public's leaders to be effective. This responsibility requires that individual citizens learn to function as civil partners in a public arena. Just as Will has called for legislators to employ deliberation in order to develop social policies conducive to public interests, the public must first help define the problems and recognize the consequences of potential actions.
As we, the American citizens, scrutinize future election campaigns and community issues, it will serve us well to consider the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1824, ``The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.'' MEMO: Stephanie Stetson is a Virginia Beach resident and the president
of Community Networking Association, a regional group devoted to
stimulating public discourse.
KEYWORDS: PUBLIC JOURNALISM PRESIDENTIAL RACE 1996 by CNB