Murphey: The Co-Opting Power Of Cynicism

murphey1By Rep. Jason Murphey

He was a good legislator. He had the best of intentions, a driving desire to do right, and had staved off the co-opting forces of special-interest influence, personal pride, and self-interest. He had good ideas for reform and and the courage to act on them.

However, his attempts at reform didn’t always meet with success despite numerous tries.

Over time the impact of the failed attempts changed his disposition. As his time in legislative service drew to a close, this legislator seemed to realize that his efforts wouldn’t meet his expectations and his vision of reform would not occur. Worse still, he seemed to believe that if he could not bring about reform, then neither could the other reform-minded legislators. During his last few months, he became disengaged, no longer interested and in no way encouraging to those who still believed in the effort.

I have frequently contemplated on the irony of the good legislators who manage to survive the overwhelming pressures of special-interest influence and personal pride only to give in to a force just as dangerous — cynicism.

Cynicism completely takes away the ability of a legislator to be an effective advocate for reform. Even worse, in one case, I witnessed cynicism drive another well-meaning legislator into such a bitter state that he became one of the foremost opponents of the very reforms for which he purportedly advocated. If this person couldn’t lead a successful reform effort, then he would seek to destroy those who still believed reform was possible.

As policy makers, it should be our foremost goal to avoid the trap of cynicism.

Readers of these articles will recall a series in May and June which were extremely critical of three recent developments in the Legislature. This included the ever-deteriorating legislative budget process which has increased the state’s debt and built a massive year-to-year budget deficit through the use of “one-time” money; the tendency for leaders of the House of Representatives to roll back our hard fought transparency and process reforms; and, state government’s unfortunate decision to raid millions from transportation funds.

I could have written many more articles about these and other setbacks recently experienced in state government. It would be extremely easy to allow these failures to result in cynicism.

But, I attempt to defeat cynicism by reminding myself that there is still enough positive news to the extent that I could write nothing but positive articles explaining the new reforms and successes which are occurring in state government. Oftentimes these reforms are being implemented through the actions of the same elected officials who are instating the previously described dastardly deeds.

I endeavor to draw the line between informing of the challenges while also pointing to the positive through a formula which I borrowed from my participation in the Guthrie Toastmasters Organization. Toastmasters taught us that for each piece of constructive criticism, an evaluator should offer at least two emphasis of the positive.

The positively-themed articles of the last few weeks have been my attempt to act according to this formula.

That said, I do believe I have a duty to honestly describe some of the growing number of challenges now facing reform-minded legislators and will write about some of these challenges in future articles.



Print pagePDF pageEmail page

*

Copyright © The McCarville Report