Uniquely Alabama: 2022 Doesnt Have To Be Politics As Usual – Patch.com

"Uniquely Alabama" is an occasional series where Patch tries to find the answers to questions about life in Alabama. Have a question about the Yellowhammer State that needs answering? Send it to michael.seale@patch.com.

I have been a media professional for about a quarter of a century, and one of the aspects of my job I enjoy the most is covering elections. Yes, I know, that seems almost masochistic, but I love the political process and love reporting on it, even in today's climate.

So, 2022 is an election year and in Alabama we have a bunch of important decisions to make. We will vote for members of Congress, governor, state legislators and a bevy of measures, laws and local officials. But I was thinking about it this morning and realized something has to change.

Our democratic process, thankfully, is all about change. If we don't like what our elected officials are doing, we can change that by voting for someone else. Seems simple, doesn't it? So then, how is it that Alabama has so many of the same problems decade after decade? Is it complacency? Lack of good candidates running for office? Is it just a result of being so overwhelmed by our problems that we just plug our ears and close our eyes? Maybe all, maybe just some of those things.

Look, I know that corrupt and/or ineffective politicians are not unique to Alabama. Nor are they unique to any one political party. But in 2017 alone, the heads of all three of our government branches were removed because of corruption. We as Alabamians have a deep and embarrassing history of bad politics, and bad politicians.

This year needs to be different. It is time we look at our elected officials in a different way. It is time that we see them for what they are: they are our employees. Think about any job interview you have been on. If you are a hiring manager, think about job interviews you have conducted. What kind of questions did you ask? How did you answer questions asked to you? And why the heck aren't we treating political candidates the same way?

Political candidates have realized that in this state, you really don't need much of a platform to run and get elected to office. I mean, our own governor won in a landslide in 2018 without debating anyone, without really campaigning at all, and without letting any voters know what she was going to do if elected. And I am not picking on Kay Ivey alone. Most politicians, especially incumbents, figure (correctly in most cases) that debating or giving speeches or saying too much can actually cost them their jobs. And that is sad and unacceptable.

I remember the 1998 Alabama gubernatorial race between Fob James and Don Siegelman, and how their public debates and campaign rhetoric involved little more than the two of them trying to out-Christian each other. No word on how to improve public education, fix our roads, fight crime and poverty (all issues that prevent Alabama from being the best it can be). Instead the entire election focused on who was more Christian than the other.

Listen, my grandmother was a good woman, a church-going Christian who was devout in her faith. But that in no way qualified her to be the governor of Alabama.

Don't get me wrong. I have lived in Alabama my whole life, and I know how important faith is to the people of this state. And of course we want to elect public officials who share our ideologies. But I go back to the job interview analogy. If you are interviewing for a job and the only thing on your resume is where you go to church and how often, chances are you are not getting hired. And nor should those candidates vying for political office in essence job candidates applying for a job where WE are the hiring manager.

Buzz words scattered throughout some ambiguous rhetoric have become the norm for politicians these days. They toss around terms that they know resonate with voters, but the words around those terms are just gibberish.

Look at just about any political ad. It is essentially a word salad with key words tossed into it. "Gibberish gibberish gibberish SOCIALISM, gibberish gibberish gibberish GUNS, gibberish gibberish gibberish FREEDOM," or "Blah blah blah INFRASTRUCTURE, blah blah blah RACISM, blah blah blah OPPRESSION," and so on.

And all of those things are important issues. But just identifying the issues does not make a person a good candidate for office. Again, if you went into a job interview and just told your potential employer that you know what the company does, that hardly makes you qualified for the job. And any hiring manager is going to have followup questions to get you to elaborate on HOW you would perform the job, not just that you know what the job is.

A candidate just saying, "We need to get guns off the streets," is merely identifying a problem one that most voters are well aware of and is not in any way giving a good job interview. A hiring manager would undoubtedly follow up with, "And how are you going to get that done?"

But instead, we as voters do not act as hiring managers and just take statements like that to mean that they will do something about whatever problem they identify in their campaign speeches and ads. And that is not how this should work.

Our state legislators make on average more than $50,000 a year. And that is a part time job, by the way. Our congressional delegates in Washington make a minimum of $175,000 a year. The governor of Alabama makes $127,000 a year. Paid for by us. By a population whose average annual income is a paltry $27,000.

In essence, let's hold our political candidates accountable in the same way that a manager holds employees accountable. It's not enough that they just identify our issues. Make them tell us HOW they will address those issues. Make them tell us in detail how they will work for us. Because we are absolutely the boss. And we don't have to employ them if they aren't earning their keep.

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Uniquely Alabama: 2022 Doesnt Have To Be Politics As Usual - Patch.com