The Week That Was

originally published October 1, 2008

Last week was a doozy. Around here we were still smarting from Congressman Paul Broun, Jr.’s snub of the very political debates that helped elect him in his first run for the 10th District seat. And in fact, at that debate Broun’s lead opponent declined to show up and subsequently lost heavily in Athens, whose vote went to Broun and provided his victory margin. Broun came out of nowhere to win, but now he’s somewhere, and he can float above the fray, leaving his challenger, Bobby Saxon, to debate an empty chair. Here’s hoping the result is an empty chair in Washington, to be filled by Bobby Saxon.

The 10th District is worth mentioning as a lead-in to the week that was, because our Congressman is our link to Washington and all that’s happening there. While Broun runs around the district jousting at “liberals” and immigrants and homosexuals, the economy which he has ignored has come crashing down.

Or only close to crashing, we hope. As these words materialize, Congress is gathering to vote on the bailout plan, and no doubt this national crisis will provide Broun an opportunity for some more meaningless posturing.

This financial crisis roared in like a hurricane, leaving most of us feeling helpless in the face of gigantic forces we little understand and having no idea what the effect will be on our nation and ourselves. That effect will take time to see. Will it have an impact on the enormous fortunes that others accrue while most of us go about our workaday lives? Will it bring a slowing down of the rapacity of the rich and the weakening of government’s ability to regulate the institutions that gouge us? It’s hard to say what will happen, because the government has for so long been used to write the laws in favor of the rich (including the lawmakers who write them).

The press, with its facile shorthand, bills this debacle as a struggle between Wall Street and Main Street, but it’s no contest. The financial legerdemain that has brought crisis to Wall Street is totally foreign to Main Street. Do you know anyone who can explain what’s going on up there and how it will affect us down here? Interestingly, Athens doesn’t even have a Main Street, but we do have a Wall Street. So much for journalistic shorthand.

In a strange twist with a definite local impact, while New York and Washington were imploding, all of a sudden we had a shortage of gasoline here. Supposedly the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the shortage is the perfect antidote for our complaints about high gas prices. High gas prices killing you? Nah. You ain’t seen nothing yet. We’ll show you something that will make you grateful to pay $4.50 a gallon and wait in line for the privilege. There are rumblings that Gov. Sonny Perdue should have acted faster to assure supplies, but again that stuff is beyond us on Main Street, if we had one.

Everybody, including McCain and Obama, is rushing to the defense of the middle class. Note to Obama: lose the middle class. Nobody wants to be identified as middle class, just like nobody wants to be stigmatized as poor. Middle class has become a pejorative term, with its connotations of middle-brow taste and failure to become rich. Will this financial crisis tumble some of the rich back into the middle class, or will they just be the formerly rich?

Meanwhile, here at home last week, we had some political drama of our own. After a long silence, Athens-Clarke County District 10 Commissioner Elton Dodson announced that he is dropping out of his campaign for re-election. This means Dodson’s opponent, Mike Hamby, will become the new commissioner. In his statement Dodson mentioned family opportunities that conflict with his ability to continue serving. It was evident from the beginning of the election that Elton just didn’t have his heart in being a commissioner anymore, but he couldn’t bring himself to quit and throw his office up for grabs. When it turned out that his only opposition was Hamby, Dodson apparently came to the conclusion that Mike would be a good fit for the district and for Elton’s approach to government, making it easier to bow out. In politics, opportunities pop up and must be seized before they disappear, and sometimes they’re not obvious. Mike made a bold move by running against an incumbent, and now he’s as good as elected. All Mike’s work in other people’s campaigns honed his political instincts.

And then, at then end of the week, the Dogs lost. Lost ignominiously to Alabama, though they fought back with courage in the second half. Here’s hoping that game will prove to be the wake-up call that clears everybody’s heads of all that Number One crap and gets us down to playing football.

And now, for us all, as the great Larry Munson would say, it’s a whole new ballgame.

Pete McCommons

editor@flagpole.com