I'm Not Down.

Lots of reasons for post-campaign blogging hiatus. Depression and bad feelings not in the list. Website technical constraints, family health issues, and dual (some say dueling) commitments to Barack Obama and Effective Networking are the leading reasons.

I'll be back this weekend with more cman bloggy goodness.


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Now playing: The Kinks - I'm Not Like Everyone Else

Migration Issues

My provider, the totally awesome Webcore labs (see link bottom of page) moved me to a new server. The process seems to have eaten a few posts. I'll get them back over pretty soon. Still recovering from post-campaign hangover and catching back up at work.

Campaign Wrap Up

The calendar says September 19 was only 45 days ago. It has been 45 of the longest days of my life. Not is a bad way but in literally long hours of hectic, interesting and stressful days. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Here are some things I’ve learned in the last 45 days:

Some of the side streets of Clinton are among the worst streets in the developed world. Seriously. I've been to some pretty run-down places in Europe and certain streets in Clinton put the side roads of Slovakia, Poland and Croatia to shame. To wit: Parts of Cleveland Avenue, 14th Street by the Arboretum – one of our finer City institutions no less – blocks long stretches of Roosevelt and McKinley, so say nothing of 18th Avenue N. by my own home. This situation is the product of decades of neglect. It is going to take at least a decade to fix.

People sense that times are changing; that with great changes come opportunities. The citizens of Clinton know that we are well positioned to take advantage of those opportunities. They also know that it will take a change in mindset and a change in the way of doing things if we are going to be a leading city in the Midwest instead of a laggard.

The citizens of Clinton are weary of the same old way of doing things. They want a city government that is more transparent and more engaged with the voters. Far too many people feel --rightly or wrongly -- that important decisions are back-room deals and the results presented to the voters as fait accomplis. Improving this situation is mainly the responsibility of the city staff and city officials. But a big part of fixing this also means getting our local media more involved. It is not good enough just to report literally what is said every two weeks. The job of the media is to provide all-important background, analysis and context for voters. We have to demand more of both the city and the media.

Finally, the people of Clinton are tremendously optimistic, honest, engaged, informed and open-hearted people. Through all the hard work, it has been a great pleasure to get to know Clinton better. It has been an honor to have many place a great burden of trust in me. It is no wonder that Iowa has become the place where the process of picking our next president begins.

That same burden of trust has been placed on all of us by our founding fathers. I urge all of you to pick up that burden for the half-hour or so it will take to vote on Tuesday. In these troubled times, where so little is being asked of us in support of such vital causes it is one thing we can do that matters the most.

Whatever the result on Tuesday night, I look forward to continuing to work and serve in this wonderful city on the Mississippi. I hope that this election can be a new beginning of community involvement. Because I truly believe that together, we really can make Clinton a great place to be.

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Campaign Blog: Vaclav Havel on Morality and Environmentalism

Posted from the campaign site. Link and discuss here.

I had the great honor of campaigning and conversing over beers with Vaclav Havel in 1990. If there is anyone in the world who can speak from a position of moral authority it is him. Here is a boigraphical sketch of Havel.

This week Havel wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, "Our Moral Footprint." What does morality and environmentalism have to do with city government, you may ask? Havel writes:

We must return again and again to the roots of human existence and consider our prospects in centuries to come. We must analyze everything open-mindedly, soberly, unideologically and unobsessively, and project our knowledge into practical policies. Maybe it is no longer a matter of simply promoting energy-saving technologies, but chiefly of introducing ecologically clean technologies, of diversifying resources and of not relying on just one invention as a panacea.

I’m skeptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important, but equally important is support for education, ecological training and ethics — a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.

What Havel is saying is something I completely agree with; that we cannot fix our society's problems -- from the environmental crisis to corruption in government -- with technical or proceedural changes. The changes have to begin with us. We need to rediscover the moral and ethical core in our society.

This moral rediscovery most certainly does not include the culture of moral judgement-making that is so popular among certain political parties. No, it must first and foremost be, as Havel points out, the consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

Part of that shared responsibility is the duty of Americans to be involved in their own government. That is the genius of the dream of the Founding Fathers -- that free people can govern their own affairs through involvement with and holding accountable their elected representatives.

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Time to Walk the Walk.

It is really easy to bang away at the keyboard sneering and playing Monday Morning Quarterback with our politicians at all levels. Which isn't to say that those sneers and second-guesses are unearned. But at the end of the day if we really, really want to look ourselves in the mirror, or face our children and say we are really making a difference then it is time to push ourselves away from the desk. Time to walk the walk.

Which is why I announced this week that I am running for Clinton City Council for an At-Large seat. The election is this November 6.

Just a couple of weeks ago, via Ed Fallon's IM for Iowa mailing list I got a message urging people to run for their local offices. Ed said,

Somehow, we have to get beyond the ridiculous, popular notion that all politicians are crooks. Heck, even my favorite folk singer, Don McLean, said as much from the stage as he performed the closing act at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month, calling all presidential candidates “liars.” Do some tell lies? Sure. Big ones. But if McLean would choose to pay attention, he would hear a lot of truth in what some of the candidates have to say. In fact, some campaign rhetoric follows the same themes McLean so poetically expresses in his music.

I don’t know how to put this any more emphatically, so imagine that the next sentence is highlighted, bold-faced and underlined (this e-mail program only allows caps): WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. IF POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT AND ACT ONLY IN THE INTEREST OF BIG BUSINESS AND THE VERY WEALTHY, IT’S BECAUSE WE LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!

I've spent a lot of time in my life as the person or a person behind the candidate. I have always said that I would take my turn, when I had my fortune made and I could do and say what I wanted. But that would mean that I would allow my children to grow up in a city and a region that is not the great place to live, work and do business that I know it can be.

There is a lot of work to be done. If this campaign is to be run right -- that is to say run to win -- then there are doors to be knocked, funds to be raised, signs to be put up and voters to be turned out.

This blog is going to go on hiatus until after Election Day. But, I will continue to blog, just in a more focused way. I'll be blogging about what it is like to run a local campaign in Iowa as a first-time candidate. Please join the conversation over at www.andersonforclinton.org

Later,

Connor Anderson


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Maintenance Break

Posting will be light this week as my provider migrates me to a new server, I migrate to Moveable Type and prepare for a couple of other major announcements. Back Thursday-ish.

Keys to Success in Iraq

I attended Sen. Barack Obama's speech on Iraq in Clinton today. First, off I was rather impressed that he has attracted Zbigniew Brzezinski as an advisor to his campaign. Mr. Brzezinski introduced Obama.

The actual pullout plan was a small part of a speech that was focused on the need for a pull out as a prerequisite to re-engage America's diplomatic and political efforts to secure peace not only in Iraq but in the region. Obama promised to personally conduct diplomacy to this end.

Obama also stated that a final resolution must come from the Iraqi people as part of a new constitutional order. He mentioned a soft partition as a possible solution but stressed that it must be the Iraqis' decision, not one imposed from above.

He focused on the cost of the war in both lives, money and in the things not done: education, healthcare, etc.

Good speech. Rational, and as many have said, there are no good choices left in Iraq any more. Only bad choices and worse choices. A lot of this is straight out of the Iraq Study Group proposals from last year. The rest just common sense.

Mock this (or any Democrat's) plan if you must. But compare it to the Bush administration's Keys to Success:



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