The real elitists
by Tyler Jane Barley

Last week the Supreme Court allowed to stand a lower court ruling that declared unconstitutional a recent Arkansas term-limits initiative. The main crux of the initiative involved placing a "Ignored voters instructions concerning term limits" notation on voters' ballots next to the names of incumbents who did not satisfy some litmus test. Other than being extremely complicated and difficult to explain in one paragraph, much less a sentence, this initiative reveals the term limits movement leaders to be the grand cultural elite us cultural middle-class folks always knew they were.

The group supporting this initiative goes by the name "U.S. Term Limits". Might as well be called "The voters are too stupid to live, and so we must save them from themselves" camp. Alexander Hamilton would be proud. He never trusted the unwashed, anyway.

I exercised my right to vote last week, and I gave my vote for mayor of St. Petersburg to a man who has a recent drug conviction on his record. "It was powder, man, not crack!" he'd holler at anyone who would listen. Not many folks did. And while many people believe I threw my vote away on a candidate destined to finish last in a field of four, I made my choice consciously, after educating myself about all the folks in the running.

Plenty of people in St. Pete wanted Harry Kitchens to be barred from running for mayor because of his cocaine possession conviction. "There should be a law!" was the battle cry of many people (all white, by the way), who openly despaired of such a person running. And see, since he was the one black candidate out of the four, there was this remote chance that the folks of south St. Pete (white and black) would get together and reject the current power structure, which produced the other three candidates.

"There should be a law", indeed. You know, I voted for Mike Dukakis in 1988. I've voted for lots of losers (and in these conservative times, baby boom style, that's becoming much more common), and I have never felt like I was throwing my vote away. If I saw the notation "Ignored voters instructions concerning term limits" next to a candidate's name on a ballot, I'd punch a hole next to the name just to spite the bastards that put it there.

Voters have done some stupid things. Proposition 13 (and lots of props since) in California, Republicans in Virginia nominating Oliver North, the election of Evan Mecham in Arizona. All of these are unforgivable lapses in collective judgment. Each of these votes had dire consequences: property taxes in California are still a mess, Virginia lost the chance to elect a decent senator and Arizona received a national reputation for intolerance and hatred. Well, perhaps that last one is fitting. Whatever.

The fact is, democracy is an imperfect thing. All human creations are imperfect, from that rotten little kid next door to every major religion. You know the Winston Churchill quote, and it still goes without saying. Do I wish people would elect more tolerant and enlightened people like Warren Rudman, Nancy Kassebaum and Alan Simpson? Absolutely. But we get Sam Brownback, Trent Lott and Connie Mack. I protest and declaim many of the results of our system, but I stand wholeheartedly behind the apparatus.

And it stands behind me. I am free to say just about whatever I want about our national leaders (the Secret Service doesn't like those late-night drunken porn-riddled e-mails to the White House, but I'll keep a secret if you can). Hell, I'm old enough now to run for the House. Not many people on the west coast of Florida would take too kindly to a freak power uprising, but if I wanted, I could raise the Gonzo standard and see what happened. I don't think I'd shave my head, though.

Yes, the Constitution supports my right to give a rambling and jumbled discourse delineating my own personal feelings about recent Supreme Court decisions. It doesn't judge quantity or quality (good thing about that latter one, too). In fact, it doesn't judge at all. And in the end, that's what I really like. The Constitution is like Bill Cosby, the TV dad: reasonably tolerant, as long as I don't go and do something really stupid.

Guess those old white guys of the Enlightenment really had something, eh?

Tyler Jane Barley ruminates in St. Petersburg, Fla. And by the way, Harry Kitchens came in dead last with 692 votes, or 2 percent. Wasted vote, indeed. Humph!

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