Sep 6, 2006

The Truth About Local Politics

The Mrs. and I spent the last few days at the Oregon Coast. Monday night, while fixing dinner in our motel room, I turned on the TV and channel surfed for a few minutes. On a local access channel, I ran across a rerun of a Tillamook County Commission meeting from sometime in August.

I stopped with my dinner preparations and began watching the Commission meeting. They were talking to a developer and city staff about rights of way, street setbacks, lot sizes, and other small details for a proposed new development. The smallest, tiniest details were discussed endlessly.

I started wondering if their meetings frequently lasted until 1 am as they often do for the Troutdale City Council. I noticed the County Commissioners sat at quite a distance from each other. I wondered what details were in the staff report. I began trying to mentally visualize in "3D" the plat map shown onscreen.

Then, I was interrupted by the Mrs.: "HEY! WE. ARE. AT. THE. BEACH. You can't keep away from it, can't you?" She was giving me this funny look. It was either a look of disgust or sympathy. I don't remember which.

She had me there. So I responded as casually as I could with, "You're right, honey, but hey, I did notice that these public meetings are boring to watch, aren't they?"

The Mrs. gave me this look of incredulity. I better capitalize it to make sure you can get an accurate picture: Incredulity.

Then she said, "Yes. Boring to watch. You didn't know?"

Then it hit me. She was right! Local politics are a lot like soccer. It's fun to be in the game, but it's boring to watch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting way to put it. But for me, other than my little blog, I am not a part of politics, just very interested.