Shane! Come Back Shane!: A Modest Proposal

I think we need a gunslinger
Somebody tough to tame this town
I think we need a gunslinger
There’ll be justice all around.

John Fogerty, “Gunslinger,” from his 2008 album Revival

Congressman Jim McDermott, the liberal Democrat from the 7th District of the State of Washington, has made a request for federal funds to help replace dilapidated windows in Seattle’s Rainier Club. Mr. McDermott, a member of the Rainier Club, has responded to press inquiries variously, including the following eye-popping statement: “Everybody in the 7th District has the right to make a request — the University of Washington, The Rainier Club, everybody.” He then went on to say that he submits all such requests to the House Appropriations Committee without screening and allows the Committee to review and determine their validity.

I am afraid this attitude boggles my mind. Congressmen are at the heart of a representative government. In other words, we, the people, elect some of our membership to Congress to act in our collective behalf with the thought that they will act wisely and conscientiously in doing so. Therefore, it seems to me that part of a Congressman’s obligation is to sift through the myriad requests people make of their government, passing along only the legitimate requests and denying the illegitimate ones in the spirit and tradition of Harry Truman’s notion that “the buck stops here.” After all, why do we need to pass all of our requests for federal aid to a Congressman so he or she can do naught but dump them into the maw of the Congressional funding funnel when we could simply do that ourselves without having to pay the Congressman’s salary? If the Congressman isn’t going to exercise any discretion whatsoever, what do we need him or her for?

To put the matter into perspective for the benefit of readers who do not reside anywhere near Humptulips County, the Rainier Club is best defined by language taken from its own website extolling the benefits of membership:

“The Rainier Club is a home-away-from-home for business, cultural and civic leaders, diplomats, and other professionals. Our members are pampered with personalized service within the context of an elegant setting. From fine dining to daily fitness, from business gatherings to private parties, from wine tastings to educational courses—The Rainier Club both reflects and enhances the diverse lifestyles of the Puget Sound area.”

In other words, the Rainier Club (in my personal vernacular) is the quintessential old-boys club – stuffy, pompous, slow to accept the realities of modern society, and the best representation of the worst aspects of a British men’s club anywhere West of the Mississippi. Not only that, but many of the old-boys who are members of the Rainier Club are either extremely well known in the Seattle community as leading professionals and businessmen, very wealthy, or both. These folks are not struggling. The fact that the membership of the Club has been unable to raise pledges from among their own membership to replace their own windows says volumes about the members’ misinterpretation of the concept of noblesse oblige such that it somehow includes an innate right to forage at the public trough simply because the Congressman happens to be a member.

Along with the rest of America, I watched in awe as the Republican dominated Congress of the Bush presidency sent one earmark after another through the Congressional system without shame or regard to the collective disbelief of the general public. One would have thought that the resounding defeat of the Republicans in the 2008 elections would have sent a strong message and taught the Democrats that if they want to stay in power they need to not emulate the Republicans by engaging in aggressive earmarking. Instead, based upon the public comments of Mr. McDermott, one has to conclude that the lesson learned by at least one Democrat was that it is now his turn at the public trough and, by God, no one can keep him from it.

I wonder which of these two lessons were learned by the rest of the official population of Washington DC? In short, just how dumb is the average Congressman?

I am not certain I want to know the answer to that question, primarily because I fear I wouldn’t like what I might learn. I am desperately trying to keep some faith in the notion that our elected representatives are honest, truthful, faithful, and interested in being good stewards of the public trust. I know that sounds strange, but I have admitted elsewhere to a belief in Pookas, so the reader cannot be completely astonished at my naivete.

There is also a part of me that believes that some wrongs – particularly those which are vile and dastardly lies that assault the character of honest men and women – are best addressed by the use of a horsewhip in a dusty street. When our Congress acts as if its true purpose is to help their friends, neighbors and contributors –especially their contributors – feed at the public trough with respect to private needs or concerns that aren’t in the public interest, then the Congress is committing a vile assault against the the public trust. If these actions continue from Congress to Congress, from party to party, on the general principal that “they had their turn, now its mine,” then it is high time to find someone to wield a horsewhip on individual Congressmen, and on Congress collectively, effectively, publicly, and without remorse for those who receive the public whipping.

I am not talking about appointing an ombudsman to oversee the actions of our government and to deal with citizen appeals. An ombudsman would be far too civilized for what we need. Our need is not for someone to act with reason and care in resolving individual injustices or unfairnesses. Our need is, rather, for someone empowered on our collective behalf to cry foul when the public trust is abused and when lies and misdirection are used to justify the abuse. To be exceedingly frank, our need is to have someone officially empowered to publicly label things as what they are in plain and simple language when the need requires.

We need Shane to buckle on his six-shooter and ride into town one last time against the background of the Western mountains to put down Jack Wilson once again. We need to create an Office of Federal Gunslinger staffed by fearless souls who can and will cry foul when the need arises. We need to insure its funding, to free it from any form of lobbying or restraint, to not populate it with underlings and lickspittles whose job it is to parse things into meaninglessness, and to appoint to the position a fearless individual who is unafraid and unwary of consequences and relishes the privilege to speak out in common sense Anglo Saxonisms whenever the public trust is being raped or the public trough is being consumed wholesale for personal – not public -reasons.

To be fair, my ideal gunslinger would be more akin to Ransom Stoddard than Shane. If the name “Ransom Stoddard” doesn’t ring a bell (and I had to look it up), he is the character played by Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He struggles to get to the point of taking his gun into the dusty street with the intention of shooting down Liberty Valance – not because he is afraid (which he is), but because it is contrary to his notion of justice to use a gun. For Ransom Stoddard believes in the rule of law and in his own ethics, and the notion of using a gun to achieve justice and right is contrary to both notions. But, he comes to realize that he must take this action simply because it is the only way to extinguish the evil that Liberty represents, and, in the interests of the public good, he takes his gun into the dusty street and uses it. And, in doing so and regardless of whether or not he actually was, he becomes The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

I like this image better than that of Shane or of Gary Cooper in High Noon because it ought not to be easy to cry foul any time one wishes. We do not need a gunslinger who will use his or her weapon indiscriminately if we truly want to achieve a goal of effective humiliation of those abusing the public coffers. We want someone who will speak sparingly, but who will speak without hesitation and in plain English when the situation demands. We need someone who will publicly look Jim McDermott in the eye when he makes facile, unthinking statements of the kind complained of and say: “Congressman, that is pure and simple Bullshit and you know it!”

Similarly, the Office of Federal Gunslinger should be empowered to report on the collaborators of defalcating Congressmen and other public officials – those members of the general public who, through greed or a sense of entitlement, make the kinds of requests that came from the Rainier Club. The Office of Federal Gunslinger needs to understand that corruption doesn’t just come in the forms of simple bribery that exist in many countries, but that in the United States and other “developed” countries it occurs in highly sophisticated and often overly-justified guises. The holder of the title of “gunslinger” needs to understand further that the act of simple bribery so common in the “under-developed” world probably has, at some level, more dignity (if the word can be appropriately used in this context) associated with it than the more sophisticated corruption we face in our world.

After all, as Mr. Fogerty says in the first stanza of his song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjQ22C7Ycjc):

Lookin’ out across this town
Kinda makes me wonder how
All the things that make us great
Got left so far behind

So, bring on the gunslinger, but give him or her a whip instead of a gun and let us see honor established in the dust of the street. After all, if the gunslinger doesn’t appear and act, then we, the voting public, will just have to do it ourselves starting in 2010.

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