I was invited over to Marianna last month to speak at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast honoring state and local elected officials.
I'd never been asked to write or say nice things about public officers, so the idea intrigued me. As I told the officeholders and business types at the breakfast, it was a short speech -- but the topic has stuck with me.
Just what is the proper level of respect we owe our politicians, administrators and public employees? We'll pause here while you insert your own derisive comment.
They're doing the jobs we, ourselves, asked them to do -- necessary things that we couldn't do ourselves. Some do better than others, some are doing more or less than we want done, but we have only ourselves to blame if we tolerate incompetency or chincanery in office.
Take our Legislature, which is coming into special session tomorrow to fix -- yet again -- the state budget. They'll also work on automobile insurance and probably at least talk a lot about property taxes.
It can't be easy to be pulled away from your job and family on short notice. Coming to Tallahassee and working on public business two months a year in regular session, then one week a month for committee work, gets old in a hurry. And then there are those pesky special sessions and the rigors of campaigning every two or four years.
They don't need the money, about $36,000 a year. Although they try hard to act like just regular folks, almost every one of these legislators is pretty wealthy (by middle-class standards) and, in their private-sector jobs, they're either the bosses or high enough on the corporate ladder that they can take time off for politics.
Regular folks? How many of us could take four months off from our jobs to campaign? If you needed to raise a half-million dollars to seek or keep your job, could YOU do it?
And, of course, nobody asked them to serve. Nobody is making them run, or to seek re-election. We have an eight-year term limit in the House and Senate, but it really hasn't changed much. About the same percentage of legislators are leaving after four or six years (not counting those who get defeated), and relatively few try to move from the House to the Senate (and even fewer run back the other way) so they can stay more than eight.
Power is a drug for many. Ambition burns so hot in some, you can almost smell the sulphur of sold souls. It's flattering to have lobbyists, department heads, corporate bigshots and university presidents seeking your favor, even though you know that in a few years they'll be fawning just as fondly over the next member in your seat.
And yet, many of them do work hard and try to make Florida a better place. They're not the dewey-eyed idealists Gov. Charlie Crist likes to describe (a company in which he includes himself), but there are members who really do think beyond the next election or the one after that.
Since I started in this business 41 years ago, some of the finest, smartest, most honest people I've known have been political leaders. And so have some who made me wonder why they are allowed out alone, some who would steal a carbuncle.
As I told the Chamber of Commerce folks over in Marianna, maybe part of the problem is that their mail comes addressed to "The Honorable ...."
Washington author Allen Drury is best known for "Advise and Consent," but he also wrote a novel called "Capable of Honor." His thesis was that Congress is not made up of honorable men and women, so much as it's populated by people who are capable of rising to the occasion -- often when they have no other choice.
That's pretty much true in real-life politics.


Bill Cotterell
Political editor
Tallahassee Democrat
(850) 671-6545