High Expectations

This Memorial Day I discovered, at long last, why incumbents sometimes hold an advantage over challengers. Following my keynote address at the National World War I Museum and Memorial, also known as the Liberty Memorial, I spoke with a number of the nice people who attended the program. Amongst those who took the time to respond to my speech was a woman who shared a story with me. She told my how she had informed one of my previous opponents that she was going to vote for me, even though she was a lifelong member of his political party.

She told me that she explained her position by telling my opponent she had invested ten years in me. "Over the ten years that Cleaver has been in Congress, I have probably sent him over a thousand emails and letters. He knows where I stand on just about every major issue that comes before him."

"It's not personal," she told him, "I am 66 years old and I just don't have the time to break in a new Congressman."

The fact that many of us have been repeatedly elected means, in some cases, that we know exactly what our constituents want us to do. We know our voters want us to work together to get things done. And we know they deserve to be treated with respect, and expect us to act like, and truly be, statesmen. They want to turn on the news and see external statecraft, rather internal warcraft.

A political pundit recently said that the voting public is not disappointed in Congressional gridlock because they no longer expect much. I disagree. The public has high expectations, and we should raise the level of our functionality to meet their standards.