By Guest Blogger Rich Robinson
Why do local politicians run for office? It is a thankless job. Mediocre pay, high stress, long hours and a seemingly ungrateful constituency combine to make a job at NorCal picking-up garbage seem uncommonly pleasant.
There are many reasons a person runs for political office. As a political consultant, I’ve heard most of them. But the most common motive for running is that a person wants to help their community and make a difference.
Having established their utmost belief in the most common theme associated with high school graduation speeches, many have no clue as to what difference they want to make but are sure once they are there it won’t be difficult to figure out.
Most people who run for public office are good and decent people, a rare few don’t belong anywhere near the public trough, and then there are the true visionaries.
I bring this up because former local State Senator John Vasconcellos has been named one of the 100 people who are screwing up America by right-wing author Bernard Goldberg. John joins other luminaries as Jimmy Carter, Paul Krugman, Dan Rather, Al Franken, Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand.
Not since Nixon’s enemies list has such a courageous group of people been so honored.
We in San Jose have been served well by most of our elected officials for a long time. There have been mistakes, not everyone is a John Vasconcellos, but each of us should take the time to thank at least one local politician for taking the time to do a job we are unwilling to accept ourselves-lest we get our hands dirty.
Rich Robinson is a founder and principal of The ERW Group.
Can it be called Monday morning Politicianing? I still think that though they do do the dirty work (I just said do-do) that we have the right to question them when they don’t do ANYTHING like Ronny G. Make some bold moves and I can disagree, but doing nothing is the worst thing you can do as a politician.
This is a satire piece right Rich?
“Courageous”. Oh man – you got me rolling on that one.
“Not everyone’s a Vasconcellos”. Classic!!
(BTW, wasn’t Vasconcellos the guy who proposed allowing 14 year olds too vote?)
Rich, I take back the big stink I made ealier about you getting a column. This is great stuff!! Let me know when you start doing comic books.
No doubt Bernie Goldberg has listed the likes of Tom DuhLay on the other side of his mindless ledger.
I’m running b/c I have a better plan than anyone can propose or imagine. I want to share it w/ the good people of SJ and by extension the county.
Gee Rich, I was almost driven to tears when I read your comments this day. Then I thought maybe I should find a church and see if I could worship at the altar of Saint John Vasconcellos. That didn’t work either.
So I got in my car, loaded my newest Barbara Streisand CD and drove downtown to gaze in awe and wonder at the new City Hall.
(Please note the capital letters in City Hall).
My take on most of the local politicians is that they are the ultimate social climbers.
Changing an old saying a little. “Those that can do, those that can’t run for office.” Show me one that can. and run for office as well, and that person will get my vote.
Bernard Goldberg is hardly right wing (that is giving him way too much pizzsazz); he is more of stolidly moderate conservative. I make this correction as the luminaries cited above are a selection that does not include one truly magnificent right winger who is on the list, Michael Savage. I am pleased that he is included with the liberal elites that you mentioned.
Also one of America’s very greatest film-makers, Oliver Stone, is on the list along with the wife of America’s greatest televsion comedic creator, Laurie David, married to Larry David.
I like John Vasconcellos, too (an unusually authentic politician). I spoke with him when I was taking phone in pledges for KKUP radio. Making Goldberg’s list puts him a very exciting company that enhances rather than in any besmirches his legislative career.
Rich…I like John also; but describing Barbara Streisand as “courageous” is a bit of a stretch. A better description might be an excellent entertainer who was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Speaking of running for office, what about David Pandori? Should he run for mayor? See http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/12917237.htm
He says he is thinking about it and claims we have one of the “worst city councils in history , and certainly one of the worst mayors.”
“Most people who run for public office are good and decent people, ” – but were they ever elected ?
” many have no clue as to what difference they want to make but are sure once they are there it won’t be difficult to figure out ” – but their campaign supporters will point out those public policy decisions and the words to justify the decision is in the “public interest” even if the actual facts don’t support the many poor public policy decisions
” But the most common motive for running is that a person wants to help their community and make a difference. ” – but have you ever seen a poor successful professional politician ?
” If you want to test a man ( woman)‘s character, give him ( political ) power.
– Abraham Lincoln
If we want to have ethical, honest, open and fiscially responsible government we need to
1) put in place reasonable ethics, disclosure and open government policies since you can not legislate morality or ethics
2) consider that electing good and decent people who are clueless as to how to determine what is good public policy result in poor public policy as we have often seen and the typical response that “electing professional politiicans since they know how the politicial system works” only results in special interest biased poor public policy decisions
3) consider that political power corrupts some people immediately and many people over time so our political practice of continously electing the same professional politicians to multiple offices has resulted in much questionable or unethical behavior as public policy decisions look more like deals to raise special interest campaign funds for their next election
4) realize that political contributors expect that public policy and other decisions that financially benefit them will be supported by those politicians ( pay to play politics ) they helped finanace their election
5) be able to differentate between – the good and decent people who behave in an ethical manner and insist all the other elected officials and govenment employees behave in an ethical manner and – the increasingly ethically challenged professional politicians and their staffers who do what is necessary to get elected, stay in office and finance their next political election campaign
” A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker. “
– H.L. Mencken
We need politicial leaders not elect more professional politician followers who come into office as good and decent people but many times are unqualified when initially elected and are unwilling to put the time into learning the issues. They comprise their ethics and make poor publc policy to pay back the special interests so they can raise more campaign funds to be elected again
Politicians, ethics, power & pay to play politics
Don’t deny John Vasconcellos the credit he deserves: he’s earned his place on anyone’s list of American crackpots. Politicians like him pose a bigger threat to us than do the typical suspects we elect, simply because they subject us to something much more dangerous, they subject us to what THEY BELIEVE. In Vasconcellos’ case, because he believed that self-esteem was a decisive component in societal success and could be taught, he turned our students into lab rats and put the taxpayers of this state into the self-esteem business. A program, he proclaimed, that would put an end to the cycle of failure and criminality amongst California’s poor.
And what a resounding success it has proved to be! Today, schools in even our poorest communities are producing a new kind of pregnant fifteen year-old: one who feels good about herself, doesn’t care which local loser is “my baby’s daddy,” and is dumb enough to believe her future is bright. Post touchy-feely, gang membership in the state reached an all-time high, with Nortenos and Surenos alike so proud to wear their colors that it must make Vasco’s heart soar. The impact of self-esteem training is best demonstrated by the tens of thousands of confused young Californians trying to figure out why the same state that told them in school they “mattered” and “were important” has locked them up in prison and thrown away the key.
John Vasconcellos’ vision got him national recognition but got us Californians nothing but a screwing. We’ve wasted our tax dollars, hopes, and classroom hours chasing after one politically correct vision after another, all of them aimed at avoiding unpleasant truths, all of them designed to excuse failure, all of them leaving us worse in their wake.
And your solutions, Finfan??
It’s interesting how the Finfans of this world are able to define the entire career of somebody like Vasconcellos by one issue, and then completely misrepresent both the issue and it’s result.
The guy should have his own talk radio show!
As a recovering koolaid drinker going on 8 years now (I voted for the big green props, voted for Clinton, etc) here’s how the road to recovery begins.
You feel better about yourself (and superior to those unenlightened red state rubes) because you know the left is compassionate and they’ll do a better job on education, taking care of the poor, diversity, etc.
Most of your friends also drink koolaid and all the local and mainstream koolaid news you consume reinforce these notions.
But you have a friend or 2, that you respect, that happen to be conservative and who admit to listening to one of those right wing nutjob radio shows. Kinda wierd – you think to yourself – doesn’t add up.
So one day you actually decide to listen to the nutjob radio show just for a kick. Then you find that there’s some merit to what’s being said, and logic and reasoning behind the arguments.
Then you start to look around with a more skeptical eye and what do you see:
– education has gone down the toilet in CA
– the urban poor are worse off than ever before
Education and compassion for the poor – both of these are pillars of the democratic party. How can this be?
Then you start to realize the left’s rhetorical rubber isn’t hitting the road. You start to understand that the game is all about the unions and the left working together to keep power.
The little guy, the poor, your children’s education, can take a flyer because all the compassionate, democratic heart on the sleeve stuff is just so much empty rhetoric.
It’s at this point that you are on your way to recovery.
BTW, I’ve yet to see anywhere on this board where someone has taken apart one of FinFan’s arguments.
I wonder why.
#13 – That’s because it’s not worth getting into a duel with an unarmed oppenent.
Novice, nicely stated. My political/philosophical journey had many similar paths. It’s been more than 8 years for me though so I often lack the energy these days to bother verbalizing my thoughts in this echo chamber. Keep it up.
Ernesto writes:
“It’s interesting how the Finfans of this world are able to define the entire career of somebody like Vasconcellos by one issue, and then completely misrepresent both the issue and it’s result.”
—
I don’t believe that I summed-up anyone’s career, and if you have any evidence that Vasco’s self-esteem campaign was of benefit to the state (the bill payers), or if my interpretation of it was wrong, please share. What I did say, and will repeat without reservation, is that the people of this state and nation have been short-changed by charlatans serving as public servants and foisting upon us politically correct nonsense like the self-esteem calamity.
Long before John Vasconcellos took office there was a system to prepare young people for success already in place. It was called education, and it involved a strict, structured curriculum and absolute performance standards. Failure, whether at the individual or group level, was not viewed as an indictment of the system, but as a lack of student commitment and personal discipline. Teachers ran their classrooms, principals ran their schools, and parents were expected to rule their children. Psychologists were not part of the equation. Neither were the race peddlers. It was a system that produced generation after generation of well-prepared young people, the very people who secured our freedoms and took this state and nation to the forefront of the modern world.
But the educational system was an easy mark, not because it possessed the real flaws endemic to all complex organizations, but because it could be criticized and attacked with impunity; blamed for the failures of the dumb and the lazy. So the psychobabblers, always in search of a steady paycheck, latched onto the fuzzy-headed politicians and provided them with the crap solutions that spared feelings and devalued that much-dreaded scourge: personal accountability. The satisfaction of the ethnic groups and the feminists rose as fast and as steady as test scores and achievement declined. Disasterously, “feelings” and “ethnicity” and “gender” had become more important than obedience, effort, and performance. It was stupidity run amok, and with the arrival of the self-esteem issue California’s decline finally got what it deserved—the Doonesbury treatment, starring John Vasconcellos.
To quote John McEnroe “you can’t be serious.”
If you want to know the importance of self-esteem on a child, ask a teacher.
Some of you have no data to back up your claims. You live in one of the safest big cities in the country and you worry about violent crime from children and blame it on their “self-esteem”.
Do yourself a favor, stop watching the news and take a walk at night alone. Come back safe and allay your worries.
When John started the Self-esteem task force he was ridiculed. Now, no child funded aside, it is recognized as an essential for the successful education of children. And nobody, on this board or anywhere else in this city, knows more about education, has done more for education or is better versed in education policy than the former Chair of the Education Committee in the Senate.
John Vasconcellos, critics aside, walks the talk—and he always uses his own name when he takes a position. Of course, that takes self-esteem, which many still lack.
Most of those in prison lack self-esteem. It is not the “liberals” who have harmed our systems, it is conservatives—from Reagan to Deukmejian, from Wilson to Arnold. It is the Governor, stupid.
Anyway, I did notice not one individual has, so far, lauded a local figure who has made a “difference”. Which, of course, confirms by thesis of an ungrateful constituency.
P.S. Peter, you didn’t even like Yentl?
“Most of those in prison lack self-esteem.”
But do they feel guilty when they’re eating their cheap vegetables? If not, they have no compassion either! Now whadda we do?
ebonics, self-esteem, bi-lingual education, (please fill in any I might have left out). Plus a yearly battle royale with Mississippi and Alabama for 48th place on achivement test scores.
Yep, I bet there’s a long line of parents that’d like to give Vasconcellos a big hug.
Show our legislature and teachers union how much we appreciate them. Go big on Props 77 and 75.
The Self Esteem Task Force Report was issued in 1990, making the maximum age of those who followed 15.
Not to mention that implementation techniques to recognize and enhance self-esteem among students didn’t happen over-night.
I don’t know of many 15 year olds in the prison system.
John believes people are innately inclined to be good. I agree with him.
It is a corrupt culture, lack of opportunity, excessive punishment, and institutions (some churches) that tell people that they are bad, sinful from birth that cause a lack of self esteem.
Even with self-esteem built into the curriculum, not all kids will “get it”. Parents, bad teachers, peers, grandparents, brothers, sisters etc. all contribute to a person’s self-esteem.
But having recognized that self-esteem can lead to positive behavior, which nobody refutes, how can anyone possibly be against it?
The fact is our kids, as a whole are getting better, not worse. There will still be those in prison, teenage pregnancies, and other social problems.
But there will be less of them, as society and individuals recognize that each of us has a unique human potential, that we are not born “bad” and that true self-esteem is not just about how you feel about yourself, but how you treat and respect the others around you.
As for therapy, almost everyone could use some—in finfan’s case—some more than others.
Looking forward to watching Governor Special Interest go down big time for his fraudulent “reform” special election (and waste of our money.)
Fall upon your own words, Mr. Robinson. If, as you say, “those in prison lack self-esteem,” then one must conclude, given that the majority of those incarcerated are of an age to have been enlightened by Mr. Vasconcellos’ self-esteem project, that his program failed them.
You cite Mr. Vasconcellos’ considerable experience in educational policy as if that alone should quiet his critics. Sorry, but I refuse to accept Mr. Vasconcellos as having any more expertise in the field than was possessed by those traditionalist teachers and administrators who fell out of favor over the course of the disastrous, liberalizing make-over of our public school system. It was with profound disrespect that know-it-all reformers like Vasco changed the system from one where the student was expected to understand the teacher’s lessons to one where the teacher is expected to understand the student’s feelings. I wonder how the Vasco-educated generation “feels” about their state having to import engineers from the Third World?
You say that self-esteem is “essential for the education of children,” as if that somehow justifies the assumption that a child’s self-esteem is accessible to the state, something for which there is no evidence. Self-esteem is not something one absorbs like religion, or masters like arithmetic. It is a complex, mysterious interaction of nature and nurture, a trait just as likely found—or not—in a hut-living Hindu as in a Beverly Hills cheerleader. Self-esteem instruction deserves to be classified as therapy, not education, and we don’t send our kids to school for therapy!
The only government institution with a track record of improving self-esteem is the military, and the only reason it is successful is because military science has had ten thousand years to figure-out how to remold young men. Otherwise, the only other institution with any self-esteem building credentials is a private one, one with equally ancient roots: parenthood.
Our children are too valuable to be left to someone’s good intentions. And that is my problem with your hero: his assumption that good intentions and the authority to act equal good public policy. They don’t. Good intentions based on unsound science have led us to the current sorry state of public education: one in which liberals and conservatives alike are trying to get their kids into good school districts (the ones dominated by whites and Asians) or the best private schools. Such is the legacy of the public education experts you admire, Mr. Robinson, but please, please, don’t let that leave you feeling bad about yourself.
Mr. Robinson,
The self-esteem report was issued in 1989. Our prisons are full of brutal thugs who were exposed to self-esteem programs during the 90’s, when they were school age. Your intentionally misleading mathematics would fool only a Vasco-educated reader.
You wrote:
It is a corrupt culture, lack of opportunity, excessive punishment, and institutions (some churches) that tell people that they are bad, sinful from birth that cause a lack of self esteem.
—
Earth to Robinson: read-up on your hero. He found the god of self-esteem as a result of therapy; it was Vasconcellos’ own lack of self-worth that led him to his magical discovery. His poor self-esteem, which existed despite his academic accomplishments and adult success, was not due to a corrupt culture, lack of opportunity, excessive punishment, or anything else you might want to target. It was a personal problem that he overcame through willpower and therapy. Good for him, too bad for us that he decided to force feed his own faith-based program on our children.
So, if I have it right, you passionately support devoting our educational resources to a program that: is based on good intentions and wishful thinking; has produced no measurable successes; is intended to produce feelings rather than knowledge: and arose from the therapy of its creator.
Man, that sounds like a religion. May Vasco bless you.
For anyone still interested, a good read (originally published in the LA Times) is available online at:
http://www.fathersforlife.org/self_esteem.htm
finfan,
You are right. Self-esteem, alone, cannot raise a child’s test scores. Neither can good teeth, but both good teeth and high self-esteem are essential for the overall health of a child.
In addition,some researchers have failed to distinguish between a child’s true self-esteem and an inflated opinion of one’s self—which are truly different.
John Vasconcellos is a primary example of an overachiever even though he had low self-esteem. He was successful in all he did before discovering he had low self-esteem, but he was happier after he discovered the need for self-esteem.
True self-esteem is a product of knowledge of one’s self that is based in reality. It is not the delusionary self-centered individual.
Finally if you ask me whether I would rather have a happy child with true high self-esteem child or a child with low self-esteem and high test scores, I choose the former.
I would also submit that the child with high self-esteem in unlikely to engage in behaviors that hurt them including drugs, suicide, crime etc.
Finally, there are plenty of studies which have shown a correlation between high self-esteem and success.
But success does not guarantee high self esteem, nor does high self esteem guarantee success.